NIVERSITY  OF  CA  RIVERSIDE  LIBRARY 


3  1210  01490  5986 


CONTEMPORARY 


Wmm 


FRANK  HARRIS 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


h^ 


/ 


CONTEMPORARY   PORTRAITS 


BOOKS  BY  FRANK  HARRIS 

THE  VEILS  OF  ISIS 
GREAT  DAYS      A  Novel 
THE  BOMB  A  Novel 

months  the  matador 
unpath'  d  waters 
the  man  shakespeare 
the  women  of  shakespeare 

SHAKESPEARE  AND  HIS  LOVE  A  Play 


SIR  RICHARD  BURTON 
FROM  THE  ETCHING  BY  LEOPOLD  FLAMENG 


CONTEMPORARY 
PORTRAITS 


By 

FRANK  HARRIS 


MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 
NEWYORK::MCMXV 


COPYRIGHT       I  9  I  5       BY 
MITCHELL     KENNERLEY 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Carlyle  I 

Renan  34 

Whistler  :  Artist  and  Fighter  66 

Oscar  Wilde  97 

John  Davidson:  Ad  Memoriam  127 

Richard  Middleton:  Ad  Memoriam  159 

Sir  Richard  Burton  178 

George  Meredith  198 

Robert  Browning  219 
Swinburne:  The  Poet  of  Youth  and  Revolt        228 

Talks  with  Matthew  Arnold  240 

Guy  de  Maupassant  257 

Talks  with  Paul  Verlaine  269 

Fabre  283 

Maurice  Maeterlinck  302 

Rodin  314 

Anatole  France  329 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Sir  Richard  Burtojm  Frontispiece 

FACING   PAGE 

Oscar  Wilde  97 

John  Davidson  127 

Richard  Middleton  159 

Algernon  Charles  Swinburne  228 

AuGUSTE  Rodin  314 


INTRODUCTION 

LIFE  needs  reporters,  and  creates  them  every- 
where. Not  a  tree  but  keeps  a  tally  of  the 
winters  and  summers  it  has  passed,  and  in  its  knots 
and  nodes  bears  witness  to  the  storms  and  strains 
it  has  endured. 

Nature  even,  motionless  and  inarticulate  Nature, 
is  occupied  with  its  autobiography,  and  preserves  its 
record;  buried  forests  write  their  history  in  coal- 
fields, forgotten  seas  depict  their  vicissitudes,  and 
show  us  the  form  and  imprint  of  their  inhabi- 
tants in  chalk  cliffs  and  gravel-beds;  the  hardest 
granite  and  porphyry  blocks  testify  to  their  fiery  ori- 
gin and  describe  the  chief  mishaps  they  have  suf- 
fered. Even  the  blazing  suns  analyze  themselves 
through  the  spectroscope,  and  invisible  stars  register 
their  weight  and  orbit  in  the  deflection  of  neighbor- 
ing planets.  Not  a  thought  in  the  mind  but  inscribes 
itself  in  the  furthest  star,  and  the  development  of 
all  sentient  life  from  the  dawn  of  time,  is  to  be  read 
again  in  the  being  of  the  youngest  child. 

And  if  all  creation,  from  the  sun  to  the  grain 
of  sand,  tells  its  story  and  records  its  fate,  how 
much  the  more  shall  man  sing  his  sorrow  and  his 


vl  INTRODUCTION 

joy?  For  man  is  something  more  than  a  reporter; 
and  that  something  more  is  the  source  and  secret  of 
his  ineffable  superiority:  he  is  artist  as  well.  He  di- 
vines the  hidden  meaning  in  nature,  the  half-disclosed 
aim,  and  he  does  this  by  virtue  of  the  fact  that  the 
eternal  purpose  works  in  him  even  more  clearly  than 
without  him,  and  shows  itself  in  his  very  growth. 
The  artist  is  not  content  merely  to  report  his  suffer- 
ings and  his  pleasures,  he  makes  epics  of  his  adven- 
tures, dramas  of  his  strugglings,  lyrics  of  his  love. 

Accordingly  when  telling  of  the  great  men  he 
has  met  and  known  the  artist-reporter  is  a  prey  to 
conflicting  duties.  As  a  reporter  he  is  intent  on  giv- 
ing an  exact  likeness,  scrupulously  setting  down  just 
what  his  subject  said;  as  an  artist  he  wants  to  make 
the  portrait  a  picture  and  therefore  he  elaborates 
and  arranges — exaggerating  or  diminishing  this  or 
that  feature — In  order  the  better  to  express  the  very 
essence  of  his  sitter's  soul.  And  the  sitter  is  never  a 
fixed  quantity;  he  is  always  changing,  and  whether 
developing  or  fossilizing  has  always  possibilities  in 
him,  the  infinite  interest  of  what  might  have  been  or 
may  yet  be. 

The  obligation  on  the  artist  is  to  create — to  make 
the  greatest  work  of  art  possible,  and  there  is  no 
other.  But  still  the  questions  tease:  when  and  how 
far  should  one  sacrifice  truth  to  beauty,  the  actual 
to  that  which  is  in  process  of  becoming,  the  real  to 
the  ideal?     It  seems  to  me  that  in  proportion  as 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

the  subject  is  great,  one  is  bound  to  adhere  more 
closely  to  the  fact.  Truth  Is  needed  by  the  artist  in 
order  to  make  great  men  credible  and  their  greatness 
comprehensible.  Men  of  little  more  than  ordinary 
stature  may  be  handled  with  greater  freedom. 

One  warning  must  be  given  here.  When  I  repro- 
duce conversations  in  this  boolc  and  put  the  sayings 
of  my  contemporaries  in  inverted  commas,  it  must 
not  be  assumed  that  these  are  literally  accurate :  they 
are  my  recollection  of  what  took  place.  The  re- 
ports are  perhaps  more  exact  than  most  memories 
would  be  for  this  reason;  that  from  the  moment  of 
the  talk  I  have  been  accustomed  to  tell  the  story  of 
my  meeting  and  conversation  with  this  or  that  dis- 
tinguished man  almost  as  fully  as  I  have  set  it  down 
here.  And  once  told,  the  tale  was  not  afterwards  al- 
tered by  me,  at  least  not  consciously,  and  my  verbal 
memory  is  unusually  good.  But  I  am  always  artist 
rather  than  reporter  and  pretend  to  spiritual  divina- 
tion and  not  to  verbal  accuracy. 

I  put  these  portraits  forth,  therefore,  as  works 
of  art.  "Here,"  I  say  to  my  readers,  "are  some 
of  the  most  noteworthy  of  my  contemporaries  as 
they  appeared  to  me." 

New  York,  19 15. 


CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 


CARLYLE 

THE  servant  girl  at  his  house  told  me  that  Mr. 
Carlyle  had  gone  for  his  usual  walk  on  Chel- 
sea Embankment,  so  I  went  off  to  find  him.  It  was  a 
Sunday  in  June,  about  midday;  the  air  was  light,  the 
sun  warm;  the  river  shone  like  a  riband  of  silk  in  the 
luminous  air. 

My  heart  beat  fast;  I  was  going  to  meet  the  great- 
est of  living  men,  the  only  one,  indeed,  of  my  con- 
temporaries who  spoke  to  me  with  authentic  inspira- 
tion and  authority.  Browning  I  knew  was  among 
the  Immortals,  one  of  the  very  greatest  of  English 
poets;  a  thinker,  too,  of  high  impartial  curiosity; 
but  apart  from  his  poetic  gift.  Browning  seemed  to 
me  a  well-read  Englishman  of  ordinary  stature, 
whereas  Carlyle  was  of  the  race  of  the  giants;  like 
Luther,  like  Mahomet,  one  of  the  elemental  forces 
of  humanity.  I  see  now  that  I  rated  him  above  his 
worth,  mistaking  literary  gift  and  Biblical  solemnity 
of  manner  for  insight;  but  then  I  was  all  reverence 
and  my  heart  was  thumping — 

Ah,  did  you  once  see  Shelley  plain? 

X 


2  CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

What  would  he  say  to  me — what  memorable 
thing?  Every  time  we  had  met  he  had  said  some- 
thing I  could  never  forget,  something  that  would 
remain  always  as  part  of  the  furniture  of  my  mind. 
What  would  he  say  to-day?  What  did  I  want  him 
to  talk  about?  He  would  not  be  directed:  'twas 
better  to  let  him  take  his  own  course.   .  .  . 

He  looked,  I  thought,  the  prophet;  his  clothes 
loose  and  careless,  for  comfort,  not  show;  the 
shaggy,  unkempt  grey  thatch  of  hair;  the  long  head, 
the  bony,  almost  fleshless  face  of  one  who  had  fasted 
and  suffered;  the  tyrannous  overhanging  cliff  fore- 
head; the  firm,  heavy  mouth  and  out-thrust,  challeng- 
ing chin — the  face  of  a  fighter;  force  everywhere, 
brains  and  will  dominant;  strength  redeemed  by  the 
deepset  eyes,  most  human,  beautiful;  by  turns  pierc- 
ing, luminous,  tender-gleaming;  pathetic,  too,  for  the 
lights  were  usually  veiled  In  brooding  sadness  broken 
oftenest  by  a  look  of  dumb  despair  and  regret;  a 
strong,  sad  face,  the  saddest  I  ever  studied — all 
petrified,  so  to  speak.  In  tearless  misery,  as  of  one 
who  had  come  to  wreck  by  his  own  fault  and  was 
tortured  by  remorse — the  worm  that  dieth  not. 

Why  was  he  so  wretched?  What  could  be  the 
meaning  of  it? 

Age  alone  could  not  bring  such  anguish?  What 
crown  had  he  missed?  He  had  done  so  much,  won 
imperishable  renown;  what  more  did  he  want?     I 


CARLYLE  5 

felt  a  little  impatient  with  him.     He  had  done  his 
work,  reaped  a  noble  harvest: 

Die  Zeit  ist  mein  Vermacclitniss 
Wie  herrlicli  weit  und  breit.    .    .    . 

I  had  only  gone  a  few  hundred  yards  when  I 
caught  sight  of  him  walking  towards  me;  he  had  a 
sort  of  loose  cloak  about  him  and  a  soft  hat  pulled 
down  over  his  eyes.  I  suddenly  realized  that  he  was 
very  old — an  impression  one  never  got  when  talking 
to  him — his  tall  figure  was  shrunken  together  and 
much  bent;  he  walked  slowly,  feebly,  leaning  heavily 
on  a  stout  stick:  my  heart  ached  for  him.  He  met 
me  without  a  word;  I  turned  and  walked  beside  him 
in  silence  for  some  little  time. 

He  seemed  in  his  most  habitual  mood  of  brood- 
ing melancholy. 

"Turner's  house,"  I  said  at  length,  pointing  to 
the  house  just  to  find  a  subject  of  conversation;  "did 
you  know  him?"  He  looked  across  at  the  house  and 
shook  his  head. 

"I  took  no  interest  in  him,"  he  said,  his  tone  one 
of  tired  indifference.  .  .  .  "Ruskin  praised  him 
extravagantly;  but  that  landscape  painting,  if  you 
think  of  it,  is  a  poor  thing  in  comparison  with  other 
painting  or  even  with  nature  herself."  (I  cannot 
give  his  Scotch  accent,  my  readers  must  imagine  it; 
but  it  lent  a  special  touch  of  individuality  to  all  he 
said.)   .  .  .  "In  every  other  art,  man  puts  a  soul 


4  CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

and  meaning  into  his  work,  and  that's  what  we 
value;  but  this"  (and  he  waved  his  hand  over  the 
river)  "is  just  beautiful  as  it  is — pairfect  without 
purpose.  .  .  .  There  is  healing  in  the  air  and  sun- 
shine; but  the  sun  and  air  and  water  care  nothing 
for  man's  dreams  or  desires;  they  have  no  part  nor 
lot  wi'  us"   .   .   .   and  he  sighed  deeply. 

After  waiting  a  little  while  I  began  again,  pouring 
water  into  the  pump: 

"Lessing  thought  you  could  not  render  a  land- 
scape in  words,  but  Goethe  knew  better,  didn't  he? 
He  knew  one  could  recall  the  impression  if  the  scene 
to  be  pictured  was  at  once  striking  and  familiar.  You 
remember : — 

Glatte    Flaeche    rings    umher. 
Keine    Luft   von   keiner   Seite 
Todesstille  fuerchterlich. 
In  der  ungeheuren  Weite, 
Reget  keine  Welle  sich. 

"The  words  call  up  a  summer  sea  sleeping  breath- 
lessly, with  a  magic  of  representment." 

"Ungeheuren  Weite,"  he  repeated,  with  a  strong 
English  accent,  "but  what  good  is't?  Fd  rather 
have  had  one  word  of  Goethe  about  man  and  man's 
work  in  the  world,  and  man's  destiny,  than  pages  of 
such  stuff.  But  about  the  important  things  of  life  he 
had  little  enough  to  say,"  and  he  sighed  again.  "None 
of  us  has  much.  .  .  .  Goethe  had  a  sort  of  beHef  in 


CARLYLE  5 

immortality;  a  curious  fragmentary  hope  for  a  few 
gifted  men?"  And  he  pursed  out  his  Hps,  while  the 
sad  eyes  held  me  with  an  unuttered  question  and 
appeal. 

What  was  I  to  say?  Comfort  I  had  none  to 
give,  no  gleam  of  hope:  personal  immortality  being 
incredible  to  me,  I  had  put  the  desire  of  it  away.  It 
hurt  that  he  of  all  men  should  solicit  the  mere  re- 
flection or  image  of  the  hope — the  hero-soul  driven 
to  this  extremity  by  the  loneliness  of  the  long  voyage. 
Like  Columbus  ("my  hero")  he  had  lived  alone  with 
the  deeps  below  and  above;  contemptuous,  envious, 
mutinous  underlings  about  him,  and  in  front  the 
Unknown.  It  wrung  my  heart  that  I  could  only 
look  my  answer — "You  have  fought  the  good  fight; 
left  behind  you  a  luminous  path  for  all  men  for  ever 
— that's  your  reward." 

The  sense  of  my  utter  impotence,  the  intensity  of 
my  sympathy,  made  me  almost  rude. 

"I  wonder  you  admire  Goethe  so  much,"  I  broke 
out.  "His  pose  as  the  high  and  mighty  Trismegistus 
kills  him  for  me  as  it  killed  him  for  Heine.  I  always 
see  him  in  his  court  dress,  bestarred,  beribboned, 
bepowdered,  sitting  on  the  old  feudal  wall,  dangling 
buckled  pumps  and  plump  calves  above  the  heads  of 
common  folk.  He  had  too  easy  a  time  of  it  in  life, 
had  Goethe.  There  is  generally  something  com- 
mon, greedy,  vulgar  in  your  successful  man;  some- 
thing servile  in  the  favorite  of  princes.    You  remem- 


6  CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

ber  how  Beethoven  reproached  Goethe  for  flunkey- 
ism.  The  great  man  should  not  play  flunkey,  nor 
have  flunkies  about  him." 

Carlyle  looked  at  me.  "Ye're  a  born  rebel,"  he 
said,  as  if  astonished,  "but  there's  some  truth  in 
what  ye  say.  Goethe  was  a  master  of  realities,  and 
perhaps  paid  too  much  attention  to  them.  But  I 
owed  him  a  great  deal,  the  wide-eyed  one:  he  saw 
everything,  accepted  .everything,  conquered  every- 
thing— a  victorious  Bringer  of  the  Light:  our 
modern  Prometheus." 

"Prometheus  suffered  a  martyrdom,"  I  cried;  "the 
light  came  from  his  own  agony :  this  man  got  podgy 
fat.  He  was  a  real  thinker,  of  course,  a  great  man; 
but  he  was  too  pompous  and  self-admiring  to  be  a 
hero.  He  might  have  stood  on  his  own  feet  out- 
side the  feudal  castle;  but  he  climbed  up  the  wall 
with  strain  of  hands  and  toes  and  sat  there  con- 
tentedly; while  Heine — well,  you  know  what  Heine 
did  to  the  feudal  wall,"  and  I  laughed  irreverently. 

"Heine!"  cried  Carlyle,  stopping  abruptly  in  his 
walk :    "Heine  was  a  dirty  Jew  pig !" 

I  had  been  very  nervous  with  Carlyle  at  first. 
I  admired  him  to  reverence,  and  when  he  said  things 
that  seemed  to  me  all  wrong,  or  even  absurd,  I 
simply  held  my  tongue.  But  little  by  little  I  had 
grown  to  know  him  better:  I  became  impatient  now 
when  he  repeated  pages  of  his  own  writings,  or  said 
things  that  were  manifestly  false.     I  wanted  to  get 


CARLYLE  7 

to  the  end  of  his  thought,  to  win  new,  deep  words 
from  him.  I  had  also  begun  to  feel  that  on  some 
subjects  we  were  infinities  apart  and  must  always 
think  differently,  and  now  he  had  outraged  a  cult 
that  was  almost  a  religion  to  me :  I  threw  restraint 
to  the  winds  and  spoke  as  I  felt. 

"Heine,"  I  burst  out,  "Heine  was  the  first  of  the 
moderns;  one  of  the  divine;  a  master  of  wit  and 
poetry;  a  lord  of  laughter  and  of  tears." 

"A  dirty  Jew  pig!"  He  repeated  the  words  as 
if  speaking  impersonally:  he  loved  argument  as  only 
a  Scot  can  love  it. 

"What  do  you  mean?"  I  cried. 

"He  was  animal,  dirty,"  repeated  Carlyle,  and  I 
remarked  his  long,  obstinate  upper  lip. 

"Dirty  as  you  and  I  and  all  men  are  dirty,"  I 
replied:  "you  remember  the  French  proverb — bon 
animal,  hon  homme?" 

"Your  French  are  dirty,  too,"  he  persisted,  "but 
not  I  nor  all  men." 

"What  does  dirty  mean?"  I  exclaimed  impa- 
tiently. "Shakespeare  was  dirty,  if  you  like;  but 
on  his  forehead  climb  the  crowns  of  the  world." 

Carlyle  shook  his  head,  and  I  retorted  obsti- 
nately: "What  about  the  Nurse,  and  Mercutio, 
Hamlet,  Portia  and  the  'dark  lady'  of  the  sonnets, 
false  Cressida  and  Cleopatra,  Goneril,  Regan,  and 
a  dozen  others — all  dirty,  as  you  call  it?  Art  knows 
nothing  of  dirt.    You  might  as  well  talk  of  a  quad- 


8  CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

ratic  equation  as  improper.  And  how  you,  with 
your  humor,  can  speak  as  you  do  of  Heine  stumps 
me.  You  of  all  men  must  appreciate  Heine's  hu- 
mor; now  impish,  now  deep-sighted,  kindly,  irre- 
sistible." 

"He  had  humor,"  Carlyle  admitted  at  once, 
"and  that's  a  wonderful  gift,  humor — a  saving 
grace.  .  .  .  Curious,"  he  went  on  after  a  pause, 
"that  none  of  the  old  Jewish  writers  or  prophets 
had  any  of  it;  they  were  all  serious,  too  serious. 
Where  did  Heine  get  his  humor?  .  .  .  There 
must  have  been  some  German  blood  in  him  some- 
where; the  Germans  have  humor,  Richter  plenty 
of  it,  and  of  the  finest." 

"You  need  not  go  beyond  the  Jews  to  find  hu- 
mor," I  replied.  "The  Stock  Exchanges  of  Eu- 
rope are  hot-beds  of  It;  humorous  stories  and 
phrases  abound  there,  and  the  Exchanges  are  the 
New  Jerusalems.  The  chosen  people  have  a  keen 
sense  of  humor." 

"Curious,"  he  said  again,  "very  curious.  But 
Heine  was  dirty-minded." 

"He  was  a  Socialist  and  singer,"  I  cried,  "mod- 
ern and  irreverent  to  his  finger-tips;  a  brave  soldier 
in  the  Liberation  War  of  humanity." 

"I  doubt  but  ye're  a  rebel  yerself,"  said  Carlyle, 
looking  down  at  me  with  quizzical  humor  in  his 
eyes,  "a  born  rebel." 

"It  hurts,"  I  said,  a  little  confused,  "to  hear  you 


CARLYLE  9 

running  down  Heine;  for  you  have  always  fought 
on  the  same  side,  though  not  with  the  same  weap- 
ons." 

"It  may  be,"  he  repHed;  "but  I  disHke  the  lechery 
of  him,  the  dirty  ape!" 

I  saw  it  was  no  use  arguing.  I  was  up  against 
a  wall  of  separation,  a  fundamental  difference  of 
nature.  I  left  the  matter  to  be  thought  over  at 
my  leisure.  It  seemed  to  me  I  had  hit  upon  a  short- 
coming of  Carlyle. 

During  his  lifetime  there  was  a  general  impres- 
sion that  Carlyle,  if  not  a  Christian,  was  at  least 
profoundly  religious  in  the  Christian  sense  of  the 
word.  He  had  been  nurtured,  so  to  speak,  on  the 
Bible :  as  soon  as  he  was  deeply  moved.  Biblical 
phrases  came  to  his  lips,  and  one  was  apt  there- 
fore to  attribute  to  him  a  measure  of  faith  alto- 
gether foreign  to  his  thought.  Much  of  the  pro- 
found sadness  in  him  came,  I  think,  from  his  utter 
disbelief:  a  reverent  soul  brought  up  in  childlike 
piety,  he  had  sought  desperately  for  some  sign  of 
God,  some  trace  of  a  purpose  in  life,  some  hint, 
however  vague,  of  a  goal  however  distant,  and  had 
found  nothing.  His  mind,  tuned  to  practical  reali- 
ties, trained  to  mathematical  demonstrations,  would 
accept  no  half-proof,  and  rejected  with  scorn  the 
fancy  that  the  soul's  desire  was  In  Itself  an  earnest 
of  fulfilment.  Gradually  he  settled  down  in 
Goethe's  phrase  to  resolute  acceptance  of  the  True 


fi0        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

and  the  Good  for  their  own  sake;  but  his  heart  felt 
starved  and  lonely,  and  as  his  mind  outgrew  the  ordi- 
nary prejudices  and  opinions  of  men  he  inevitably 
became  more  and  more  solitary-sad. 

Our  talk  fell  on  Shakespeare,  I  don't  know  why. 

"In  Heroes  and  Hero-Worship,"  I  questioned, 
"you  say  that  Shakespeare  is  the  greatest  man  who 
has  ever  shown  himself  in  literature.  That  seems 
to  imply  that  greater  men  have  shown  themselves 
elsewhere?" 

"I  don't  think  I  meant  that,"  he  replied,  "though 
it  is  a  little  difficult  to  compare  a  great  man  of  ac- 
tion with  a  great  man  of  letters:  I  am  not  sure  that 
the  literary  genius  is  the  wider  or  deeper,  though 
most  men  seem  to  believe  it  is." 

"Do  you  think  Shakespeare  greater  than  Jesus?" 
I  asked. 

"Indeed  I  do,"  was  the  emphatic  reply;  "and  so 
do  you."  I  shook  my  head,  but  he  persisted. 
"What  do  we  know  of  Jesus?  just  naething. 
Learned  people  tell  us  that  all  the  best  phrases  put 
in  His  mouth  were  old  sayings  of  Jewish  sages,  and 
the  testimony  of  the  gospels  is  of  the  weakest — 
altaegither  untrustworthy." 

"I  do  not  want  any  testimony,"  I  cried.  "The 
best  sayings  of  Jesus  all  belong  to  one  mind,  a  mind 
of  the  very  rarest.  Greatness  is  its  own  proof. 
No  two  Jews  were  ever  born  who  could  have  said, 


CARLYLE  %Y 

*Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto  me  .  .  .'  or 
'Much  shall  be  forgiven  her  for  she  loved  much.'  " 

"Humph,"  he  grunted.  "I  prefer  Shakespeare; 
he  was  larger,  richer." 

"Perhaps,"  I  replied;  "but  Jesus  went  deeper." 

"I  don't  admit  it,"  he  persisted.  "All  that  Jew- 
ish morality  was  tribal,  narrow;  'an  eye  for  an  eye,' 
stupid,  pedantic  formula;  and  the  Christian — 'turn 
the  other  cheek' — mere  absurdity.  I  see  no  great- 
ness in  any  of  it." 

"  'He  that  is  without  sin  among  you  let  him  first 
cast  a  stone,'  "  I  replied,  "is  great  enough  and  mod- 
ern to  boot,"  but  he  would  not  let  me  continue;  he 
had  got  the  decisive  argument  clear  at  last. 

"Man,  He  had  no  humor,"  he  cried,  shaking 
his  head;  "Jesus  had  no  Falstaff  in  him;  I  wad  na 
gie  up  the  ragged  company  for  all  the  disciples," 
and  again  the  deep-set  eyes  danced. 

I  tried  to  put  forward  some  other  reasons,  but 
he  would  not  listen;  he  repeated  obstinately,  "He 
had  no  Falstaff  in  him,  no  Falstaff  .  .  ."  and  he 
chuckled. 

The  subject  was  closed;  but  the  argument  had 
shown  me  how  far  Carlyle's  disbelief  had  carried 
him — in   pendulum   swing,   beyond  the  centre. 

I  took  up  a  new  subject  which  I  had  often  wanted 
to  get  his  opinion  on.  How  was  I  to  broach  it? 
I  made  a  little  cast  round  like  an  eager  huntsman. 

"You  must  have  met  all  the  distinguished  men  of 


12        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

the  age,  Mr.  Carlyle?"  I  began.  "Dozens  of  great 
men.     Who  was  the  greatest?" 

"Emerson,"  he  replied  at  once,  "Emerson  by  far, 
and  the  noblest  .  .  ."  and  he  nodded  his  head,  re- 
peating the  name  with  a  sort  of  reminiscent  emotion. 

"Greater  than  Darwin?"  I  cried  in  wonder.  "But 
perhaps  you  didn't  know  Darwin?" 

"Indeed,  and  I  knew  him  well,"  he  replied,  taking 
me  up  shortly,  "knew  him  long  ago,  long  before 
he  was  so  famous,  knew  him  and  his  brother.  I 
always  thought  the  brother  the  abler  of  the  two — 
quicker  and  of  wider  range;  but  both  were  solid, 
healthy  men,  not  greatly  gifted,  but  honest  and  care- 
ful and  hardworking.  ...  I  remember  when  he 
came  back  after  the  Beagle  cruise.     I  met  him  at 

Lady 's,  a  great  party,  and  all  the  ladies  buzzed 

about  him  like  bees  round  a  dish  of  sugar.  When 
he  had  had  enough  of  it — perhaps  more  than  was 
good  for  him — I  called  him. 

"  'Come  here,  Charles,'  I  cried,  'and  explain  to 
me  this  new  theory  of  yours  that  all  the  world's  talk- 
ing about.' 

"He  came  at  once  and  sat  down  with  me,  and 
talked  most  modestly  and  sensibly  about  it  all.  I 
saw  in  him  then  qualities  I  had  hardly  done  justice 
to  before:  a  patient  clear-mindedness,  fairness  too, 
and,  above  all,  an  allegiance  to  facts,  just  as  facts, 
which  was  most  pathetic  to  me;  it  was  so  instinctive, 
determined,  even  desperate,  a  sort  of  belief  in  its 


CARLYLE  13 

way,  an  English  belief,  that  the  facts  must  lead  you 
right  if  you  only  followed  them  honestly,  a  poor 
groping,  blind  faith — all  that  seems  possible  to  us 
in  these  days  of  flatulent  unbelief  and  piggish  un- 
concern for  everything  except  swill  and  straw,"  and 
the  eyes  gleamed  wrathfully  under  the  bushy-grey 
brows. 

"That  must  have  been  wonderful,"  I  resumed 
after  a  pause,  "to  have  heard  Darwin  explain  Dar- 
winism." 

"He  did  It  very  well,"  Carlyle  went  on,  "an  or- 
dered lucidity  in  him  which  showed  me  I  had  un- 
derrated him,  misseen  him,  as  we  poor  purblind  mor- 
tals are  apt  to  missee  each  other  even  with  the  best 
will  in  the  world  to  see  fairly,"  and  he  sighed  again 
heavily. 

"But  the  theory  must  have  interested  you,"  I  said, 
hoping  to  excite  him  to  say  more. 

"Ay,"  he  said,  as  if  plunged  in  thought  and  then 
waking  up.  "The  theory,  man !  the  theory  is  as  old 
as  the  everlasting  hills,"  Impatient  contempt  in  his 
voice.  "There's  nothing  in  it — nothing;  It  leads  no 
whither — all  sound  and  fury  signifying  naething, 
naething.  .  .  . 

"The  fittest,"  he  went  on  with  unspeakable  scorn, 
"  'the  survival  of  the  fittest' ;  there's  an  answer  for 
you  to  make  a  soul  sick.  What  is  your  'fittest,'  what 
d'ye  mean  by't?  An  evasion  I  call  It,  a  cowardly, 
sneaking  evasion,  with  its  tail  between  its  legs.     Is 


14        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

your  'fittest'  the  best,  the  noblest,  the  most  unselfish? 
There's  a  faith,  a  belief  to  live  and  die  by;  but  is 
that  your  'fittest,'  eh?  Answer  me  that.  That's 
what  concerns  me,  a  man — that  and  nothing  else. 

"Or  is  your  'fittest'  a  poor  servile  two-legged 
spaniel  sneaking  round  for  bones  and  fawning  on 
his  master,  beslobbering  his  feet?  Or  just  the  greed- 
ier mediocrity  among  hosts  of  mediocrities,  the 
slightly  stronger  pig  or  fox,  eh?  Ay  di  me,  ay  di 
me — the  evil  dreams!  'Fittest,'  humph!"  and  he 
pursed  his  lips  and  blinked  his  eyes  to  get  rid  of 
the  unshed  tears. 

"Did  you  tell  Darwin  what  you  thought  of  his 
new  scientific  creed?"   I  asked  after  a  pause. 

"I  did,"  he  said,  with  a  quick  change  of  mood, 
smiling  suddenly  with  the  gay  sunshiny,  irresistible 
smile  that  illumined  his  whole  face,  quivering  on 
the  lips,  dancing  in  the  eyes,  wrinkling  the  nose. 

"After  Darwin  had  talked  to  me  for  some  time 
a  little  crowd  had  gathered  about  us,  open-mouthed, 
listening  to  Sir  Oracle,  and  when  he  had  finished  I 
said: 

"  'AH  that's  very  interesting,  Darwin,  no  doubt; 
how  we  men  were  evolved  from  apes  and  all  that, 
and  perhaps  true,'  and  I  looked  about  me  at  the 
listeners.  'I  see  no  reason  to  doubt  it,  none;  but 
what  I  want  to  know  is  how  we're  to  prevent  this 
present  generation  from  devolving  into  apes?    That 


CARLYLE  15 

seems  to  me  the  important  matter — to  prevent  them 
devolving  into  apes.'  " 

And  the  old  man  laughed — a  great  belly-shaking 
laugh  that  shook  him  into  a  cough,  and  there  we 
stood  laughing,  laughing  in  harmony  at  length  with 
the  sun  which  shone  bravely  overhead,  while  the 
silken  wavelets  danced  with  joy  and  the  air  was 
young  and  quick. 

Carlyle's  Mission 

It  is  time  now  to  consider  what  Carlyle's  talent 
really  was  and  what  his  gift  to  men.  He  has  left 
us  in  no  doubt  as  to  what  he  thought  his  quali- 
ties and  their  proper  field.  When  he  was  asked 
to  lecture  in  London  he  chose  Heroes  and  Hero- 
Worship  as  his  subject;  and  the  book  still  stands 
as  perhaps  his  most  characteristic  performance.  His 
CromiJcell  is  the  typical  example  of  his  own  hero- 
worship.  It  will  be  remembered  that  he  chose  Fred- 
erick the  Great  to  write  about  a  little  reluctantly, 
because  Frederick,  he  said,  was  only  half  a  hero; 
he  was  not  devout  enough,  not  persuaded  enough  in 
his  faith;  but  Carlyle  chose  him  nevertheless  because 
he  was  a  "practical  hero,"  the  best  leader  of  men 
whom  that  poor  eighteenth  century  could  produce. 

His  Past  and  Present  and  Latter-day  PampJiIets 
give  us  his  view  of  the  politics  of  his  own  time.  If 
ever  a  man  believed  he  was  a  born  leader  of  men,  it 


1 6        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

was  Carlyle;  born  to  rule  in  England,  to  abolish 
the  anarchy  of  Parliamentary  misgovernment,  to 
endow  England  with  modern  institutions  instead  of 
feudal  institutions,  to  found  an  industrial  State  in 
place  of  a  chivalrous-Christian  anarchy.  Not 
"arms  and  the  man"  was  to  be  the  burden  of  the 
new  epic,  but  "tools  and  the  man."  Now,  instead 
of  dismissing  this  incommensurate  ambition  with 
cheap  ridicule,  let  us  see  in  what  relation  Carlyle 
stood  to  his  time,  and  then  we  may  be  able  to  judge 
whether  he  was  deceived  or  not  in  his  self-estimate. 

Towards  the  end  of  1908  a  book  appeared — The 
Making  of  Carlyle.  The  title  is  a  little  pretentious ; 
but  the  book  is  not  a  bad  book — a  good  book,  In- 
deed, so  far  as  it  goes;  though  Mr.  Craig,  the  au- 
thor, lends  Carlyle  his  own  errors.  For  example, 
he  declares  that  "Socialism  is  only  a  contradiction 
of  open  competition;  the  sole  difference  is  one  of 
label;  slavery  is  the  sure  mark  of  both." 

I  venture  to  think  that  Mr.  Craig  is  mistaken 
in  this;  certainly  he  is  mistaken  in  giving  this  as 
Carlyle's  view.  I  do  not  remember  a  single  pas- 
sage in  Carlyle's  writings  where  socialism  is  con- 
demned as  resembling  open  competition  in  being  a 
form  of  slavery.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Carlyle  did 
not  condemn  "slavery" :  what  he  condemned  and 
ridiculed  was  "the  freedom  of  the  wild  jackass,"  as 
he  called  it;  the  liberty  of  men  to  starve  masterless. 

Carlyle  was  not  the  first  to  see  this  side  of  the 


CARLYLE  17 

truth.  Goethe  and  Coleridge  both  had  Insisted  that 
unrestrained  individual  liberty  must  lead  to  the  worst 
slavery. 

"The  open  secret"  {das  offene  Geheimniss)  of 
Goethe,  which  Carlyle  refers  to  over  and  over  again 
in  Past  and  Present  and  Latter-day  Pamphlets,  is 
simply  the  axiom  of  Hegel  that  every  virtue  pushed 
to  an  extreme  results  in  a  vice  which  is  the  exact 
opposite  of  the  virtue.  Open  competition  for  the 
means  of  livelihood  must  result  in  the  despotism  of 
the  few  and  the  absolute  enslavement  of  the  many. 
No  worse  tyranny  has  been  recorded  in  modern 
times  than  that  which  was  to  be  seen  in  England  in 
the  generation  after  Waterloo,  from  18 15  to  1830, 
when  the  manufacturer  was  establishing  his  awful 
pre-eminence.  Thousands  of  children  were  hired 
in  Devonshire  and  Cornwall,  and  driven  across  the 
country  in  gangs  like  cattle  to  the  Lancashire  fac- 
tories, where  they  were  worked  to  death  for  the 
enrichment  of  the  manufacturers.  The  commis- 
sion of  doctors  which  "the  noble  Ashley,"  as  Carlyle 
called  him,  got  appointed,  declared  that  the  first  ef- 
fective Factory  Act  of  1833  "was  an  Act  to  prevent 
child  murder."  Carlyle,  too,  sneered  at  the  Parlia- 
ment which  decreed  that  able-bodied  negroes  in  the 
West  Indies  should  not  work  more  than  forty-five 
hours  a  week,  though  allowing  English  children 
under  thirteen  years  of  age  to  be  worked  fifty-six 
hours  a  week. 


1 8        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

While  our  so-called  statesmen  were  going  about 
declaiming  odes  to  "liberty,"  Carlyle  saw  the  evils 
of  unrestricted  liberty,  and  predicted  a  speedy  and 
not  an  honorable  end  to  what  he  knew  was  mere 
anarchy  with  a  fine  name. 

Carlyle  did  not  set  limits  to  socialism,  or  State 
and  municipal  enterprise,  did  not  say  how  far  so- 
cialism should  enter  into  our  industrial  life  and 
where  it  must  stop,  though  his  master  Goethe  had 
done  this  ^ ;  but  he  felt  that  there  was  a  place  for 
both  socialism  and  individualism  in  modern  civili- 
zation, and  it  is  to  his  credit  that  he  never  made 
one  statement  on  the  matter  that  was  false  or  mis- 
taken. Ruskin,  his  pupil,  made  hundreds  of  mis- 
takes, as  when  he  set  Oxford  students  to  build  a 
useless  road  across  a  swamp;  but  Carlyle  did  not 
blunder  or  mislead. 

The  truth  is  he  brought  morals  as  a  certain  test 
Into  economics.  He  declared  that  the  employer  of 
labor  who  simply  worked  for  his  own  hand  and 
for  his  own  enrichment  was  a  mere  buccaneer  and 
not  a  true  captain  of  industry,  and  thus  put  his  fin- 
ger on  the  sore.     It  was  his  reliance  on  the  moral 

^In  his  dramatic   fragment   Prometheus,   Epimetheus  asks: 
"What  then  is  yours?" 

And  the  answer  of  Prometheus  is  a  notable  example  of  Goethe's 
insight: 

"The  sphere  that  ray   activity  can  fill! 
No  more,  no  less!" 


CARLYLE  19 

instincts  which  gave  him  his  unique  authority. 
Goethe's  praise  of  him  was  curiously  right — "a 
moral  force  of  incalculable  importance."  Let  us  now 
consider  his  practical  proposals  and  see  how  time 
has  treated  his  pretensions. 

The  Empire-Builder  and  Reformer 

Seventy  years  ago  Carlyle  saw  more  clearly  than 
our  Parliamentary  people  of  either  party  see  to- 
day. Seventy  years  ago  he  proposed  to  take  our 
surplus  population  in  British  warships  and  settle 
them  on  the  waste  lands  of  the  Canadian  North- 
West  and  the  waste  lands  of  South  Africa  and  Aus- 
tralia— a  genial  Empire-building  idea,  if  ever  there 
was  one,  which  would  have  settled  up  the  Canadian 
North-West  Instead  of  allowing  free-trade  or  free- 
chance  to  settle  up  the  American  North-West.  Had 
Carlyle's  advice  been  followed  we  should  have  had 
thirty  or  forty  millions  of  Englishmen  by  now  in 
Canada  instead  of  five  millions,  and  five  or  six  or 
ten  millions  of  Englishmen  in  South  Africa  instead 
of  a  few  hundred  thousands.  There  would  have 
been  no  Boer  war  if  Carlyle's  insight  had  been  used 
sixty  or  seventy  years  ago.  The  only  thing  that 
saved  us  in  the  Boer  war  was  the  fact  that  the  Cape 
Dutch  didn't  join  their  kinsmen  across  the  Vaal, 
and  Cape  Colony  was  kept  quiet  by  the  little  band 
of  English  settlers  who  were  planted  somewhat  after 


20        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

Carlyle's  plan  In  the  Eastern  Province  sixty  or  sev- 
enty years  ago ;  nothing  else,  it  is  said,  nothing  but 
that  stood  between  us  and  irremediable  defeat. 

There  would  be  no  competition  between  us  and 
Germany  to-day  had  Carlyle  been  a  ruler  in  Eng- 
land; for  our  Empire  instead  of  counting  some  fifty 
millions  of  Englishmen  would  now  count  more  than 
one  hundred  millions.  He  was  the  first  and  great- 
est Imperialist,  just  as  he  was  the  wisest  social  re- 
former. 

It  was  Carlyle  who  made  men  realize  that  the 
"condition-of-England"  was  the  question  of  ques- 
tions to-day;  he  was  the  first  to  point  out  that  till 
we  had  drained  the  foul  quagmire  of  poverty  no 
high  civilization  would  be  possible  to  us.  And  Car- 
lyle saw  plainly  enough  that  the  quagmire  could  only 
be  drained  by  giving  the  land  of  England  back  to  the 
people  of  England.  That  was  the  first  reform,  he 
said;  all  other  necessary  measures  would  follow  in 
its  train.  But  the  quagmire  is  still  there — undrained, 
larger  and  deeper  now,  and  with  worse  effect  on 
the  public  health — all  just  as  he  predicted.  And 
the  dead  cat  of  Parliamentary  debate  still  washes 
back  and  forth  on  every  tide  in  front  of  West- 
minster, and  is  daily  growing  more  offensive  to 
the  sense.  The  wisest  governor  and  bravest  soul 
born  in  England  since  Cromwell  was  left  to  fret 
his  heart  out  in  obscurity  as  a  writer  in  a  back  street 


CARLYLE  21 

while  England  muddled  on  into  ever  Increasing  dif- 
ficulties— the  blind  leading  the  blind. 

There  is  a  memorable  page  in  his  Life  of  Sterling 
which  gives  the  furthest  reach  of  his  insight  on  prac- 
tical social  reform.  He  saw  that  the  "intellectuals" 
to-day  were  suffering  as  much  as  the  "hands."  Our 
four  professions — the  Church,  Medicine,  Law,  and 
the  Army  and  Navy — he  remarks,  were  all  profes- 
sions In  the  Middle  Ages.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that 
modern  life  has  grown  ten  times  more  complex,  we 
have  hardly  attempted  to  organize  any  of  the  new 
sciences  or  arts,  or  "regiment"  their  teachers  in  ef- 
ficient bodies.  Consequently,  the  new  intellectual 
workers  are  all  at  a  disadvantage  and  suffer  under 
an  inferiority  due  to  the  negligence  of  our  rulers. 
In  the  same  way  he  might  have  gone  on  to  point 
out  that  three-fourths  of  all  the  schools  to-day  in 
England  for  higher  education  were  there  in  the  days 
of  Elizabeth,  and  draw  the  obvious  moral. 

When  I  knew  Carlyle  In  1877-9  ^  tried  more  than 
once  to  get  on  this  subject.  I  wanted  to  know  why 
he  had  not  taken  the  conventional  road  to  power, 
why  he  had  never  stood  for  Parliament?  I  woke 
the  old  lion  up,  but  could  get  no  answer  save  a  con- 
temptuous sniff.  When  I  pressed  him  again  later  he 
told  me  he  had  not  had  the  time  and  money  to  waste. 
I  returned  again  and  again  to  the  charge.  "You 
wanted  to  show  your  Insight  as  a  ruler,"  I  said  in 
effect,   "and   perhaps   because   that  was   your   true 


22        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

metier  you  underrated  your  own  literary  skill  and 
every  one  else's." 

"I  have  none,"  he  ejaculated. 

"That  is  delightful  nonsense,"  I  retorted,  "the 
first  chapter  of  your  French  Revolution  is  one  of 
the  finest  pictures  ever  painted  in  words,  and  painted 
deliberately  with  conscious  artistry:  chance  has  no 
such  achievement." 

"Painted  truthfully,"  he  corrected,  "and  not  ar- 
tistically at  all,  unless  truth  and  cunning  are  one — 
as  perhaps  they  are,"  he  added  as  if  to  himself. 

"And  because  you  see  that  this  contest  with  pov- 
erty is  the  chief  problem  of  the  day,  you  think  little 
of  your  pictures,  even  of  Cromwell  or  of  Fred- 
erick," I  persisted. 

"Ah!"  he  replied,  "Cromwell  would  have  taken 
the  problem  in  hand.  If  Cromwell  had  had  the 
East  End  before  him  he  would  have  drained  the 
swamp — Greatheart,  I  call  him." 

I  got  nothing  from  him  but  such  glimpses  of 
truth  till  I  spoke  once  of  Disraeli. 

"Curious,"  I  said,  "that  he  was  more  in  sym- 
pathy with  you  than  Gladstone.  He  at  least  offered 
you  a  baronetcy.     Why  didn't  you  take  it?" 

"Baronetcy!"  the  old  man  barked.  "The  un- 
speakable Jew  would  have  given  me  the  reward  of 
work,  but  not  the  work:  he  might  have  kept  the 
reward  if  he  had  given  me  the  work."  And  he 
rose  to  his  feet.     "Then  I  should  have  had  some- 


CARLYLE  23 

thing  better  to  do  than  write  words,  words,  words 
for  fools  to  read  who  don't  even  know  what  you 
mean,  who  never  will  know.  A  baronetcy  to  me ! 
Why  not  a  silk  sash  and  a  garter!  I  was  an  old 
man  before  Disraeli  even  knew  that  I  was  alive, 
and  what  I  might  have  done !  It  hardly  bears  think- 
ing of  .   .   ."   and  he  turned   away. 

"There  was  Froude  now:  they  gave  him  a  chance 
in  South  Africa,  and  he  did  pretty  well,  I  believe. 
Honest,  kindly  Froude;  but  they  never  gave  me  a 
chance.  Sometimes  I  wonder  why?  I  would  have 
done  what  one  man  could.  But  I  had  to  write  in- 
stead, and  I  wasn't  made  to  write;  I  was  made  to 
guide,  perhaps,  and  direct;  I  might  have  done  things : 
who  knows?    It  was  not  to  be,  I  suppose.  .  .  ." 

Carlyle  was  right,  I  verily  believe — "it  hardly 
bears  thinking  of."  That  England  should  have  left 
a  finer  intelligence  than  Burke,  a  greater  force  than 
Chatham,  to  rust  unused  for  fifty  years;  the  best  re- 
forming brain  of  two  centuries  unemployed,  hardly 
bears  thinking  of.  The  English  are  suffering  fro..i 
not  having  used  him,  and  are  likely  to  sufier  f.sr 
many  a  long  year  to  come.  England  does  not  even 
trouble  to  stone  the  prophets;  she  shrugs  her  broad 
shoulders,  and  when  they  speak  too  loudly  puts  them 
out  of  doors  or  stuffs  her  fingers  in  her  ears.  Ger- 
many used  Bismarck  and  England  did  not  use  Car- 
lyle, though  he  was  a  greater  reformer  and  ruler. 


24        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

That  difference  may  have  tremendous  consequences 
one  day. 

To  sum  it  all  up,  Carlyle's  gift  to  men  was  in 
essence  astonishingly  simple :  he  was  the  best 
product  of  English  puritanism  of  whom  we  have  any 
knowledge.  All  that  that  belief  had  in  it  of  honesty 
and  sincerity,  of  single-hearted  allegiance  to  what 
was  true  and  right  and  just,  came  to  fruit  in  Thomas 
Carlyle. 

"All  great  thoughts  come  from  the  heart,"  wrote 
Vauvenargues,  and  in  exactly  the  same  spirit  Car- 
lyle used  the  heart  or,  as  he  would  have  said,  his 
highest  instincts  as  the  supreme  guide  in  human  af- 
fairs.    And  there  is  certainly  no  better  guide. 

It  was  this  honesty  and  sincerity  which  gave  Car- 
lyle his  solitary  and  singular  literary  triumph.  The 
clever,  adroit,  able  man  practically  concerned  with 
his  own  rewards  and  his  own  successes,  the  "hero" 
of  the  school  of  Hume  and  other  such  historians, 
was  abhorrent  to  Carlyle.  All  great  men,  he  felt, 
were  absolutely  in  earnest,  sincere  to  the  soul,  filled 
iji^ith  the  spirit  which  urges  man  to  ever  higher  ac- 
complishment. No  Mahomet,  no  Cromwell,  no 
Goethe  is  thinkable  without  this  elemental  force.  All 
Carlyle's  heroes  were  seers  like  the  prophets  of  old, 
men  who  had  a  vision  of  the  truth;  men  through 
whom,  as  he  phrased  it,  God  Himself  had  spoken. 
And  so  he  taught  a  fat,  smug  grocer-folk  what  he- 
roes were  and  how  useful  they  were   (if  we  must 


CARLYLE  25 

measure  stars  by  their  candle-power)  and  he  showed 
a  crowd  that  admired  Crystal  Palaces  what  a  true 
temple  was  like,  a  temple  not  made  with  hands — 
eternal  in  the  heavens.  Carlyle  was,  indeed,  a  moral 
force  of  incalculable  value. 

His  literary  power  all  comes  from  his  practical 
insight  into  facts  and  his  astounding  knowledge  of 
men.  He  has  left  us  a  splendid  gallery  of  realistic 
portrait-sketches.  Who  that  glances  at  them  can 
ever  forget  his  Frederick,  or  his  Mirabeau,  or  his 
Robespierre,  or,  for  that  matter,  Mme.  Roland,  or 
Marat,  or  Danton,  or  a  hundred  other  inimitable 
photographs  pinned  to  life,  so  to  speak,  by  touches 
of  humorous  exaggeration. 

The  Puritan's  Limitations 

On  all  the  main  issues,  then,  of  modern  politics 
the  great  Puritan  was  in  the  right;  his  insight  has 
been  justified  by  the  event:  he  was  at  once  the  best 
guiding  and  governing  force  ever  seen  in  England. 
We  must  now  try  to  realize  his  limitations  and  short- 
comings. Strange  to  say,  he  was  typical  of  Puri- 
tanism also  in  this;  his  blind  side  was  the  blind  side 
of  the  whole  movement,  and  supplies  the  reason  why 
the  movement  failed  to  satisfy  modern  needs  and 
why  it  is  that  to-day  Puritanism  is  universally  dis- 
credited. 

Carlyle  had  hardly  any  sense  of  sex  or  stirring 


26        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

of  passion.  He  was  even  more  devoid  of  bodily 
desire  than  Swift  or  Ruskin.  This  lack  brought  him 
to  misery  and  his  life  to  wreck.  Mr.  Craig  points 
out  that  he  never  shared  his  wife's  natural  longing 
for  children;  he  could  not  even  understand  it.  He 
had  not  enough  sensuality  to  comprehend  his  wife's 
ordinary  needs  and  so  he  treated  her  harshly  with- 
out realizing  his  own  blindness  till  it  was  too  late 
even  for  atonement. 

A  passage  in  his  Heroes  and  Hero-JForship  first 
put  me  on  the  track.  Speaking  of  Dante  he  ad- 
mitted that  the  great  Florentine  was  "gey  ill  to  live 
with"  and  nevertheless,  defended  him.  Men  like 
Dante,  he  says,  of  keen  passionate  sensibilities,  and 
conscious  of  the  importance  of  their  mission  must 
always  be  difficult  to  live  with.  It  was  as  if  Carlyle 
had  been  justifying  his  own  conduct. 

One  day  we  were  walking  together  in  Hyde  Park: 
as  we  neared  Hyde  Park  Corner  It  began  to  rain: 
naturally,  I  quickened  my  pace  a  little.  Suddenly, 
to  my  utter  astonishment,  Carlyle  stopped,  and  tak- 
ing off  his  soft  hat  stood  there  in  the  rain  with  his 
grey  head  bowed.  For  a  moment  I  was  lost  in 
wonder:  then  I  remembered  his  picture  of  old  Dr. 
Johnson  standing  bareheaded  before  his  father's 
shop  in  Lichfield  half  in  piety,  half  in  remorse.  I 
guessed  that  Carlyle  was  thinking  of  his  wife,  and 
then  it  flashed  across  me  that  it  was  here  in  Hyde 
Park  she  had  died  In  her  carriage  while  he  was  in 


CARLYLE  27 

Edinburgh.  When  he  put  on  his  hat  and  walked 
on,  the  tears  were  running  down  his  face. 

I  can't  remember  how  the  talk  began  and  my 
notes  do  not  help  me  much.  At  the  time  I  put  down 
simply:  "Johnson's  penance  and  piety;  remorse  and 
repentance  not  good,  harmful;  Carlyle's  excessive. 
Bit  by  bit  he  told  the  incredible  story." 

In  brief  the  story  was  that  he  admired  his  wife 
beyond  all  other  women,  loved  her  and  her  alone 
all  his  life;  but  had  never  consummated  the  mar- 
riage or  lived  with  her  as  a  wife. 

"The  body  part  seemed  so  little  to  me,"  he 
pleaded:  "I  had  no  idea  it  could  mean  much  to  her. 
I  should  have  thought  it  degrading  her  to  imagine 
that.  Ay  di  me,  ay  di  me.  .  .  .  Quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury passed  before  I  found  out  how  wrong  I  was, 
how  mistaken,  how  criminally  blind.  ...  It  was  the 
doctor  told  me,  and  then  it  was  too  late  for  anything 
but  repentance.  My  poor  love  !  She  had  never  told 
me  anything;  never  even  hinted  anything;  was  too 
proud,  and  I,  blind,  blind.  .  .  .  When  I  blamed 
myself  to  her  I  saw  the  doctor  was  right;  she  had 
suffered  and  I — ah  God,  how  blind  we  mortals  can 
be;  how  blind! 

"It  was  as  if  I  had  been  operated  for  cataract 
and  sight  had  been  given  me  suddenly.  I  saw  the 
meaning  of  a  hundred  things  which  had  passed  me 
unexplained;  I  loved  her  so  that  I  realized  even 
wishes   unconfessed   to   herself,   realized   that  she 


28        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

would  have  been  happier  married  to  Irving,  and  that 
she  had  felt  this.  Speaking  once  of  his  pretended 
gift  of  tongues,  she  said  'he  would  have  had  no  such 
gift  had  I  married  him.'  I  understood,  at  length, 
that  she  had  wanted  him.  Physically  he  was  splen- 
did, and  she  had  felt  his  attraction.  ...  I  loved  her 
so,  I  could  have  given  her  to  him,  and  I  did  nothing 
but  Injure  her  and  maim  her  life,  the  darling!  who 
did  everything  for  me  and  was  everything  to  me  for 
forty  years.  .  .  . 

"And  the  worst  of  it  all  Is,  there  is  no  other  life 
in  which  to  atone  to  her — my  puir  girlie !  It's  done, 
and  God  himself  cannot  undo  it.  My  girl,  my  puir 
girl !  .  .  .  Man,  man,  It's  awful,  awful  to  hurt  your 
dearest  blindly,  awful!"  and  the  tears  rained  down 
the  haggard  old  face  and  the  eyes  stared  out  In  utter 
misery. 

I  comforted  him  as  best  I  could,  told  him  that  In 
his  remorse  he  exaggerated  the  wrong  and  the  in- 
jury, that,  after  all,  he  had  been  by  far  the  best 
husband  Mrs.  Carlyle  could  have  had,  that  faith- 
lessness went  with  passion,  that  she  might  have  suf- 
fered more  with  any  other  man,  and  that  she  could 
never  have  known  with  any  other  such  perfect  com- 
panionship of  spirit,  such  intimacy  of  soul,  but  he 
shook  his  head;  he  had  always  loved  the  truth  and 
now  against  himself  he  would  not  blink  it.  "Ma  puir 
girlie!"  was  his  cry  and  "blind,  blind!"  his  ceaseless 


CARLYLE  29 

self-reproach.  He  had  put  all  his  pride  in  his  in- 
sight, and  it  was  his  insight  that  had  failed  him. 

Years  later  I  told  the  fact  at  a  dinner  at  the  Gar- 
rick  Club,  and  a  man  I  did  not  then  know  confirmed 
it  across  the  table ;  told  me  he  was  the  doctor  in  ques- 
tion and  afterwards  in  private  gave  me  the  other 
side  of  the  story  from  what  Mrs.  Carlyle  had  told 
him.  It  was  Sir  Richard  Quayne/  I  believe.  Some 
time  or  other  I  shall  probably  tell  what  he  told  me 
that  night. 

Carlyle's  confession  to  me  broke  down  all  bar- 
riers between  us.  Whenever  we  met  afterwards  he 
treated  me  with  infinite  consideration  and  kindness. 
But  all  that  is  another  story,  and  not  to  be  told 
here. 

What  concerns  us  now  is  the  fact  that  this  bodily 
disability  of  Carlyle  explains  most  of  his  shortcom- 
ings as  literary  critic  and  writer,  and  in  especial  his 
blindness  to  what  one  might  call  the  aesthetic  side 
of  life.  His  eyes  and  heart  were  closed  to  beauty; 
he  never  saw  that  House  Beautiful  of  Art  which  to- 
day occupies  the  place  in  life  formerly  held  by  church 
and  conventicle.     He  had  nothing  but  contempt  for 

*The  name  in  my  memory  is  "Dicky  Quain";  but  I  only  noted 
"the  doctor"  and  one  letter  after  it  which  is  illegible.  I  have 
since  been  enabled  to  date  this  dinner  in  1887  and  to  corroborate 
the  chief  particulars  of  my  account  by  the  memory  of  my  host 
that  evening.  Sir  Charles  Jessel. 


30        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

poetry;  "jingles"  he  called  it;  would  never  admit 
its  high  significance.  Pictures,  too,  except  of  real 
events,  he  took  little  interest  in,  and  studies  of  the 
nude  human  figure  seemed  to  him  indecent  and  dis- 
graceful: he  had  no  ear  for  music  or  understanding 
of  its  universal  passionate  appeal.  Had  he  been 
given  despotic  power  this  is  where  he  must  have 
failed;  he  would  have  starved  the  senses  and  ne- 
glected their  dramatic  and  vital  uses. 

The  curious  part  of  the  matter  is  that  though  he 
saw  clearly,  perhaps  all  too  vividly,  how  his  short- 
coming had  led  him  astray  in  the  most  intimate  per- 
sonal relation,  he  never  seemed  to  suspect  that  the 
same  physical  disability  must  necessarily  blind  him 
to  the  artistic  side  of  life  and  make  him  an  absurd 
judge  of  its  value  and  importance.  Hence  arose  all 
or  nearly  all  his  weird  literary  misjudglngs.  He 
said  of  Wordsworth: 

"A  small  genuine  man;  nothing  perhaps  is  sadder 
than  the  unbounded  laudation  of  such  a  man." 

Keats  to  him  was  a  "dead  jackass  perfumed  with 
rose-water."  He  even  went  so  far  as  to  declare  to 
me  once  that  nothing  but  brains,  sheer  insight 
counted,  and  that  Shakespeare's  brains,  apart  from 
his  poetic  and  literary  gift,  were  no  better  than  his 
own.  I  ventured  on  this  matter  pointedly  to  dis- 
agree with  him.  It  seems  to  me  that  Shakespeare 
and  Bacon,  too,  have  shown  better  brains. 


CARLYLE  31 

After  all  the  tree  is  judged  by  its  fruits  and  the 
writer  by  his  works :  whatever  virtues  he  possesses 
and  whatever  failings  will  certainly  be  found  there 
for  all  men  to  see.  And  it  must  be  admitted,  I'm 
afraid,  that  Carlyle's  works  are  not  at  all  com- 
mensurate with  his  genius,  and  represent  but  poorly 
the  fifty  years  of  unremitting  toil  he  put  into  them. 
His  slightest  writings  are  the  most  read,  and  the 
most  readable — the  Cromwell,  Heroes  and  Hero- 
Worship,  Sartor  Resarttis,  and  The  French  Revolu- 
tion. His  most  ambitious  work,  The  Life  of  Fred- 
erick, is  a  colossal  failure :  he  has  buried  his  hero 
under  the  monument  he  built  in  memory  of  him. 
Had  his  relations  to  life  been  happier  he  must  have 
known  that  no  story  without  love  in  it  could  possibly 
hold  the  interest  of  men  for  a  dozen  volumes.  As  it 
is,  the  gold  of  a  noble  spirit  is  all  dispersed  and  lost 
in  the  gigantic  earth-heap  of  a  mole-like  industry. 

If  he  had  devoted  the  eleven  years  wasted  on  his 
Frederick  to  the  story  of  Carlyle  and  his  Contem- 
poraries, if  he  had  used  his  superb  gift  of  realistic 
portraiture  on  the  men  and  women  whom  he  knew 
personally,  he  would  surely,  I  believe,  have  given 
us  a  dozen  pages  for  our  English  Bible.  It  is  not 
quantity  we  want,  but  qualit}^;  not  information  but 
Inspiration.  The  last  chapter  of  Ecclesiastes,  the 
few  verses  of  Paul  on  Charity  outweigh  a  library. 
Carlyle's  outlook  on  life  was  sombre  and  sad,  never 


32        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

joyous:  his  temper  desperate  or  despairing,  not  hope- 
ful: I  find  the  explanation  In  his  physical  weakness 
which  he  was  accustomed  to  speak  of  as  merely  dys- 
pepsia. 

All  Carlyle's  faults  as  a  man  of  letters  are  sins 
against  the  spirit  of  Beauty,  and  they  are  all  to  be 
found  writ  large  in  Puritanism.  Puritanism  as  we 
know  defaced  the  churches,  tore  down  the  images 
of  saints,  and  shut  the  theatres.  Puritanism  it  was 
that  destroyed  the  gallery  of  paintings  which  had 
been  collected  by  Charles  I,  and  ordered  that  "all 
pictures  containing  any  representation  of  the  Second 
person  of  Trinity  or  of  the  Virgin"  should  be  "forth- 
with burnt." 

Carlyle's  impotence  made  everything  about  him 
clear  to  me.  Ever  afterwards  I  saw  him  as  a  sort 
of  Polyphemus,  a  one-eyed  giant.  He  stood  to  me 
for  Puritanism  Itself  and  explained  It,  In  Its  strength 
and  In  its  fatal  weakness,  as  no  one  else  could.  Pa- 
ganism died  because  It  neglected  the  soul,  and  the 
claims  of  the  soul ;  Puritanism  died  because  It  scorned 
the  body  and  the  claims  of  the  body. 

But  it  was  honest  and  sincere  even  when  It  went 
in  bhnkers,  and  intensely  In  earnest,  and  In  England 
it  produced  two  great  men  as  witnesses  to  Its  virtue, 
Cromwell  and  Carlyle.  England  used  Cromwell, 
but  did  not  use  Carlyle,  yet  in  spite  of  his  physical 
dlsablhty  Carlyle  was  greater  than  the  ruler  whom 


CARLYLE  33 

Milton  called  "our  chief  of  men"  and  by  reason  of 
his  bodily  disability  he  was  the  more  perfect  repre- 
sentative of  English  Puritanism. 

"Gross  beginnet,  ihr  Titanen;  aber  leiten 
Zu  dem  ewig  Guten,  ewig  Schonen, 
1st  der  Gotter  Werk;  die  lasst  gewahren!" 


RENAN 

IT  was  in  1889  or  1890  that  the  late  Sir  Charles 
Dilke  gave  me  a  letter  to  Renan.  "You  should 
call  on  him  in  the  College  de  France,"  he  said;  "he 
talks  wonderfully;  if  he  takes  to  you,  you'll  have  a 
treat." 

I  sent  the  letter  of  introduction  with  a  note,  and 
called  on  Renan  a  day  or  two  afterwards  by  ap- 
pointment. I  was  shown  into  a  very  ordinary  room, 
a  room  of  the  French  middle  class,  and  in  a  mo- 
ment or  two  Renan  entered.  He  was  very  amiable; 
it  was  kind  of  me  to  come,  he  said:  would  I  not  sit 
down  and  take  coffee;  Sir  Charles  Dilke  was  one 
of  the  politicians  whom  he  most  esteemed;  his  inti- 
mate knowledge  of  France  and  his  liking  for  things 
French  seemed  to  promise  a  more  cordial  under- 
standing between  the  two  peoples.  .  .  .  While  he 
talked  fluent  amiabilities  of  this  sort,  I  tried  to  take 
a  mental  photograph  of  him. 

Renan  was  a  short  man,  not  more  than  five  feet 
three  or  four  in  height  and  very  stout.  Fat  had 
swamped  all  the  outlines  of  his  face  except  the  fore- 
head, which  appeared  narrow  in  comparison  with 
the  large  jaws  and  porky  jowl.     Yet  looked  at  by 

34 


RENAN  35 

itself  the  forehead  was  not  narrow,  of  fair  size 
indeed  and  shapely,  and  the  eyes,  which  at  first 
seemed  small  and  watchful,  were  more  usually  intent 
and  a  little  sad,  as  of  one  who  had  had  his  share 
of  life's  disappointments  and  disillusions.  The  nose 
was  of  good  form,  but  thick  and  fleshy,  suiting  the 
face.  The  mouth  was  a  better  feature ;  a  little  small, 
the  upper  lip  firm,  the  lower  sensitive  and  sinuous — 
the  mouth  of  a  born  orator  and  artist.  The  voice 
was  more  than  worthy  of  the  lips,  a  sweet  clear 
tenor,  pleasant  and  supple,  with  a  myriad  graceful 
inflections  in  it  and  significant  pauses — the  soul  of 
the  man  to  me  was  in  his  charming,  light,  flexible 
voice. 

As  Renan  sat  on  the  edge  of  the  chair,  his  pear- 
shaped  stomach  appeared  to  keep  his  short  legs 
apart;  he  had  a  trick  of  planting  his  hands  palm 
downwards  on  his  stout  thighs,  or  of  interlacing  his 
fingers  across  his  paunch,  while  twirling  his  thumbs. 
His  nails  were  ill-kept,  and  the  front  of  his  frock- 
coat  had  grease  stains  on  it;  his  hair,  worn  in  long 
locks  and  fringing  his  collar  behind,  was  dirty  grey 
in  color,  and  looked  untidy. 

Altogether  he  was  the  very  type  of  a  French 
village  priest:  easy-going  and  good-natured,  care- 
less of  cleanhness  and  neatness  as  if  lax  conduct  had 
been  further  relaxed  by  years  of  self-indulgence. 
Nothing  distinguished  in  his  appearance;  nothing 
beyond  fair  intelligence  and  much  patience  in  the 


36        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

brooding  regard;  hardly  a  trace  of  will-power  to  be 
found;  but  plenty  of  fat  kindness  and  ample  toler- 
ance, and  a  shrewd  reading  of  facts  and  men  with  the 
searching,  intent  eyes. 

His  talk  that  first  afternoon  was  not  remarkable: 
fluent  and  graceful  with  here  and  there  a  touch  of 
irony  curving  the  fine  lips  to  a  smile.  He  seemed 
rather  to  evade  knotty  points,  to  wish  to  keep  in 
the  shallows  of  ordinary  social  intercourse.  Behind 
his  smiling  amiability  I  divined  a  colossal  conceit 
quick  to  suspect  and  resent  any  lack  of  reverence. 
I  paid  him  compliments,  therefore ;  praised  his  Life 
of  Jesus,  his  Dialogues,  and  even  his  plays  effusively. 
He  lapped  it  all  up  with  smiling  satisfaction:  evi- 
dently he  had  been  very  well  treated  in  life,  this 
priest  who  had  turned  worship  into  one  of  the  grace- 
ful arts. 

I  made  my  visit  short.  At  first  he  had  seemed  a 
little  on  his  guard,  but  at  the  end  of  our  talk  he 
showed  himself  most  kindly,  amiable.  My  praise 
must  have  been  grateful  to  him,  for  he  pressed  me 
to  come  again :  he  would  always  be  delighted  to  see 
me,  he  repeated. 

A  little  later  I  called  on  him  again  and  heard  all 
about  his  travels  in  Palestine.  He  insisted  on  the 
obvious  fact  that  topographical  knowledge  is  of  the 
utmost  importance  to  the  historian, 

"When  you  see  the  Plain  of  Gennesaret,  or  the 


RENAN  37 

Lake  of  Galilee  or  Jerusalem,"  he  said,  "your  un- 
derstanding of  the  events  and  of  the  personages  Is 
enormously  vivified  and  quickened:  the  milieu  ex- 
plains the  man  much  as  the  soil  explains  the  tree. 
The  best  part  of  my  Life  of  Jesus  was  prepared  In 
Palestine.  It  was  there  Jesus  became  completely 
comprehensible  to  me." 

In  spite  of  myself  I  smiled  a  little  at  this  flat- 
tering self-estimate,  but  outwardly  I  was  quite  po- 
lite, and  followed  his  lead  by  saying  that  Carlyle 
had  told  me  the  same  thing;  he  had  gone  to  Dunbar 
before  writing  the  history  of  the  battle;  Curtlus,  too, 
always  declared  his  history  of  Greece  was  Inspired 
by  his  travels  In  the  peninsula. 

Renan  was  Interested  In  this,  and  generalized  the 
experience  at  once: 

"The  literary  and  artistic  movement  of  our  day," 
he  said,  "Is  towards  realism;  the  wish  to  see  the  thing 
as  it  is :  everywhere  the  love  of  the  document,  trust 
in  the  fact— very  Interesting." 

Sometime  after  this  I  happened  to  mention  casu- 
ally that  I  was  going  to  see  Renan,  when  an  Ameri- 
can acquaintance  asked  me  whether  It  would  be 
possible  to  Introduce  him?  He  assured  me  he  would 
enjoy  It  above  everything.  I  knew  him  only  slightly, 
but  he  seemed  so  eager  about  It  that  I  took  his  de- 
sire for  half-proof  of  sympathy  and  understanding, 
and  accordingly  wrote  to  Renan  that  I  would  call 
on  him  on  a  certain  day,  and,  if  he  would  allow  me, 


38        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

present  a  friend  who  much  wished  to  know  him. 
We  called;  Renan  was  cordial  and  charming,  but  the 
American  turned  out  to  be  a  terror.  Again  and 
again  he  tried  to  Impress  Renan  with  the  fact  that 
life  In  Paris  was  exceedingly  Immoral,  that  incidents 
took  place  there  every  day  which  would  not  be  tol- 
erated In  an  Anglo-Saxon  town.  Renan  smiled,  and 
listened  politely  for  some  little  time;  but  at  length 
his  patience  was  exhausted;  looking  up  at  him  under 
his  grey  brows,  and  evidently  taking  him  for  an 
Englishman,  he  asked  in  his  silkiest  voice: 

"Have  you  ever  seen  anything  In  Paris,  Mon- 
sieur, more  immoral  than  a  leader  in  The  Times?'' 

"What  does  he  mean?"  the  American  asked  me 
In  English.  "There  can  be  nothing  immoral  in  a 
leading  article  In  The  Times/' 

"Oh  yes,  there  can  be,"  I  gasped,  "and  there 
often  Is,  and  the  American  newspaper  is  just  as  im- 
moral as  the  English." 

After  this  I  cut  the  interview  as  short  as  pos- 
sible and  ended  it  with  the  most  flattering  things 
I  could  say  to  Renan.  I  told  him  how  I  admired 
his  celebrated  letter  to  Berthelot  and  how  right  I| 
was  that  the  first  artist  in  creative  criticism  should 
write  to  the  first  master  of  synthetic  chemistry  on 
such  a  subject  as  the  life  of  Christ. 

A  day  or  two  afterwards  I  called  again  to  apolo- 
gize to  Renan  for  having  introduced  my  compa- 
triot.    I  found  he  had  understood  everything.     He 


RENAN  39 

had  seen  that  the  American  did  not  mean  to  be  rude, 
and  he  was  desirous  of  explaining  to  me  that  he 
had  not  wished  to  reprove  him,  but  just  to  Induce 
him  to  think  of  the  shortcomings  of  his  own  race. 

"It  Is  the  rudeness,"  Renan  continued,  "of  Ger- 
mans and  Enghshmen  that  always  astonishes  us 
Frenchmen.  They  are  rude  unconsciously;  It  is  not 
a  rudeness  of  self-absorption  or  of  excitement — that 
we  could  easily  pardon;  but  the  rudeness  of  a  lower 
plane  of  thought  and  feeling,  the  rudeness  of  self- 
ishness or  want  of  consideration.   .  .   . 

"I  sometimes  think  that  it  takes  a  civilization  of 
thousands  of  years  to  make  a  nation  polite.  When 
you  tell  a  Frenchman  that  he  is  impolite  he  Is 
shocked,  he  insists  on  your  proving  It.  Even  when 
he  is  most  angry  he  understands  that  it  Is  a  grave 
delinquency.  But  I  am  Informed  that  If  you  tell  an 
angry  Englishman  or  an  American  that  he  Is  im- 
polite, he  simply  laughs  at  you;  it  would  not  seem 
to  him  a  disgraceful  charge  at  all.  He  sees  nothing 
in  impoliteness,  and  therefore  does  not  resent  the 
accusation.  .  .  . 

"Your  English  civilization  Is  too  young;  it  Is  only 
four  or  five  centuries  old,  and  the  German  clvihza- 
tlon  In  the  sense  of  national  life  is  shorter  even  than 
yours.  Our  civilization,  on  the  other  hand,  goes 
back  to  Roman  times;  we  have  been  civilized  for 
two  thousand  years,  and  the  Italians,  whose  civiliza- 
tion Is  still  older  than  ours,  are  still  more  exquisitely 


40        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

polite  than  we  are.  We  Latin  peogle  have  a  great 
inheritance,"  he  concluded,  pursing  his  lips;  "we 
ought  therefore  to  be  very  considerate  of 
others.  .  .  ." 

I  remembered  something  Matthew  Arnold  had 
written  once  on  this  subject,  and  I  told  him  of  it. 
Arnold  classed  English  and  French  civilizations  to- 
gether, saying  that  in  literature  and  art  they  have 
the  same  canons,  the  same  understanding  of  high 
artistic  work,  the  same  keen  feeling  for  faults  and 
shortcomings,  even  in  masterpieces;  because  they 
both  possess  an  old  and  rich  national  life:  they  have 
a  long  rule  wherewith  to  measure. 

"It  is  no  doubt  conceit,"  I  added,  "that  made 
Matthew  Arnold  assume  that  our  language  goes  back 
to  Beowulf,  and  that  Enghsh  civilization  dates  from 
the  landing  of  Augustine  in  the  sixth  century." 

Renan  was  quick  to  take  it  that  I  was  putting 
forward  my  disagreement  with  him  under  the  shield 
of  Matthew  Arnold. 

"But  your  language,"  he  said,  "surely  began  with 
Chaucer  about  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury?" 

"Our  Saxon  Chronicle  is,  of  course,  far  earlier," 
I  remarked,  "centuries  earlier,  and  there  are  poems 
and  things  before  that." 

"But  can  you  read  them?"  he  asked. 

"They  are  difficult,"  I  replied,  "but  I  think  they 


RENAN  41 

are  as  easy  to  read  as  your  oldest  poetry  written  in 
the  Isle  de  France." 

"Really,  really,"  he  replied,  while  apparently 
seeking  for  a  telling  rejoinder.  "At  any  rate  you 
will  admit  that  Rome  was  the  hearth  of  civilization 
from  which  radiated  all  this  pleasant  intellectual 
warmth  and  light,  and  we  are  a  little  nearer  the 
centre  than  you  are." 

"Much,  much  nearer,"  I  replied  politely. 

Was  it  possible  I  asked  myself,  as  I  went  away, 
that  the  nation  of  Racine  and  Pascal  and  Balzac 
should  think  itself  superior  to  the  race  that  had 
produced  Shakespeare  and  Bacon  and  Emerson? 
I  could  not  help  smiling  a  little  at  Renan's  amiable 
condescension. 

I  had  seen  him  many  times,  talked  with  him  on 
many  matters,  become  almost  an  intimate  indeed 
before  we  grappled  finally  over  The  Life  of  Jesus. 
I  must  confess  that  my  ideas  at  first  were  not  very 
clear  on  the  subject.  I  admired  Renan's  book,  but 
took  it  rather  as  a  romance  than  a  biography.  In  its 
own  way  it  was  very  interesting  and  worthful,  but 
there  seemed  to  me  appalling  mistakes  in  it,  miscon- 
ceptions even,  as  well  as  faults  of  irreverence  and 
impiety  which  put  my  back  up.  No  one,  I  thought, 
should  approach  that  theme  save  on  his  knees.  I 
could  not  pardon  the  easy,  careless,  condescending 
treatment  of  the  subject.     All  sorts  of  men  have 


42        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

handled  it,  great  and  small :  Rubens  and  Rembrandt, 
Velasquez,  and  Fra  Angelico.  The  best  presenta- 
tions have  always  been  the  most  reverent:  The  Stran- 
ger at  Emmaus  of  Rembrandt,  The  Master  with 
Judas  of  Fra  Angelico. 

I  did  not  want  to  discuss  his  book  with  Renan:  he 
had  always  been  particularly  courteous  and  kind  to 
me,  and  I  was  afraid  I  should  hurt  him.  But  there 
was  in  him  an  irrepressible  curiosity  as  to  the  posi- 
tion he  and  his  work  held  in  other  countries.  He 
saw,  as  Bacon  saw,  that  the  judgment  of  other  peo- 
ples had  in  it  something  of  the  detachment  and  im- 
partiality necessary  to  a  definitive  decision.  One 
day  he  pressed  me  to  tell  him  frankly  what  English- 
men thought  of  his  Life  of  Jesus. 

"They  don't  think  of  it,"  I  replied  laughing, 
"but,"  I  hastened  to  add,  "there's  no  class  in  any 
country,  is  there,  at  all  able  to  judge  your  work?" 

"Perhaps  you're  right,"  he  rejoined,  smiling  at 
the  implied  compliment,  "tell  me,  will  you,  what  you 
think  of  it?" 

"Oh,  I  love  it,"  I  replied.  "It  is  a  charming  and 
beautiful  work  of  art:  the  romance  of  religion." 

"I  see,"  he  took  up  the  thought  gravely;  "you 
think  it  is  too  artistic,  not  true  enough,  eh?  Please 
be  frank  with  me.    It  would  be  the  truest  kindness." 

He  used  sincere  words  and  I  had  to  respond  to 
them. 

"As  you  insist  upon  it,"  I  said,  "that  is  some- 


RENAN  43 

thing  like  my  meaning.  The  Life  is  written  by  one 
more  occupied  with  the  idea  of  painting  a  complete 
picture  than  by  a  man  who  is  resolved  to  set  down 
just  what  lie  sees,  no  jot  more,  no  tittle  less. 

"In  face  of  that  world-tragedy  I  think  we  Eng- 
lish want  the  actual  story  with  all  Its  gaps,  the  frag- 
mentary truth  and  the  truth  alone  with  nothing 
added,  rather  than  a  story  pieced  out  by  the  imagi- 
nation. We're  afraid  of  a  syllable  beyond  what  is 
Imphcit  In  the  known  facts." 

"You  must  give  a  concrete  Instance,"  he  cried. 
"What  you  say  Interests  me  enormously.  Where 
have  I  put  In  patches  that  swear  at  the  rest  of  the 
cloth?" 

"Forgive  me,"  I  cried;  "I  did  not  go  so  far  as 
that,"  and  then,  smiling  In  deprecation,  I  went  on; 
for  I  felt  that  my  frankness  had  touched  him  on  the 
quick;  "sometimes  even  when  the  patch  is  of  the  same 
cloth,  I  dislike  It  because  it  Is  not  the  actual  garment, 
and  I  will  not  have  that  added  to  by  any  artist  in 
clothes  however  clever." 

"An  Instance,  an  Instance,"  he  cried,  "one  in- 
stance.   You  keep  me  on  tenterhooks." 

"You  will  excuse  my  memory,"  I  stipulated,  "If 
I  try  to  quote  you  without  the  book?  (He  nodded.) 
Comparing  Paul  once  with  Jesus  you  say,  'he  had 
not  his  adorable  Indulgence:  his  way  of  excusing 
everything:  his  divine  Inability  to  see  the  wrong. 


44        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

Paul  was  often  imperious  and  made  his  aut^iorlty 
felt  with  an  assurance  that  shocks  us.' 

*'Now  Jesus  may  have  been  of  an  'adorable  in- 
dulgence'; but  he  did  not  excuse  everything;  he  was 
not  unable  to  see  the  wrong,  nor  would  such  Ina- 
bility be  generally  regarded  as  divine.  Jesus  was 
indulgent  to  sins  of  the  flesh;  but  he  was  very  severe 
on  sins  of  the  spirit.  'Woe  unto  you,  Scribes  and 
Pharisees,  hypocrites!  .  .  .  for  ye  pay  tithe  of 
mint  and  anise  and  cumin  and  have  omitted  the 
weightier  matters  of  the  law,  judgment,  mercy,  and 
faith.'  Jesus  saw  the  wrong  very  clearly  and  did 
not  excuse  it." 

"Ah,"  replied  Renan,  as  if  reheved,  "you  can 
take  a  brush-stroke  and  say  it  is  too  heavy,  but  In 
comparison  with  Paul,  I  maintain  that  Jesus  was  of 
an  'adorable  indulgence.'  It  is  all  right  enough;  but 
each  sentence  must  be  looked  at  as  part  of  a  whole." 

His  happy  carelessness,  his  invincible  resolve  not 
to  see  himself  as  I  saw  him,  or  the  faults  in  his  book, 
as  they  would  be  seen  by  others,  challenged  me  to 
continue :  he  would  not  judge  himself  though  severe 
self-criticism  is  the  first  condition  of  great  work.  I 
answered  lightly  to  be  in  tune  with  his  manner. 

"I  do  not  want  to  make  a  point  unfairly,"  I  re- 
plied. "I  chose  what  I  regard  as  a  most  charac- 
teristic passage.  You  appear  to  think  that  the  ina- 
bility to  see  the  wrong  is  a  divine  virtue.  I  regard 
that  indulgence  as  merely  the  amiability  of  a  good- 


RENAN  45 

humored  sceptic.  But  what  you  have  written  all 
hangs  together,"  I  broke  off,  "and  forms  a  whole 
— a  fine  French  picture  of  the  world-shaking  event." 

"What  do  you  mean?"  he  cried,  "why  do  you 
say  a  'French'  picture?  Do  deal  frankly  with  me," 
he  pleaded.  "The  question  interests  me  greatly; 
why  not  treat  me  as  you  would  wish  to  be  treated?" 
and  he  looked  at  me  gravely. 

The  appeal  was  irresistible. 

"You  say  that  Paul  was  'ugly' — 'an  ugly  little 
Jew,'"  I  replied;  "you  use  the  epithet  again  and 
again  as  a  term  of  reproach.  You  dwell  with  pleas- 
ure on  the  personal  beauty  of  Jesus — *a  handsome 
Jewish  youth'  are  your  words."  (He  nodded.) 
"Well,"  I  went  on,  "that  is  another  instance  of  what 
I  mean.  We  do  not  know  whether  Jesus  was  hand- 
some or  not.  One  feels  certain  that  no  one  could 
have  lived  habitually  in  communion  with  the  High- 
est as  He  did  without  bearing  signs  of  it  in  His  face. 
On  the  other  hand,  His  disciples  never  speak  of 
His  personal  beauty,  so  we  must  take  it  that  His 
message  was  infinitely  more  important  than  His 
looks.  A  biographer,  it  seems  to  me,  would  have 
done  well  to  follow  their  example.  The  spirit- 
beauty  of  Jesus  must  have  been  infinitely  rarer  and 
more  impressive  than  any  regularity  of  feature." 

"You  will  admit,"  said  Renan,  "that  the  beauty 
of  feature  must  add  to  the  spirit-beauty,  and  the 
weight  of  evidence  is  on  my  side." 


46        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

He  then  went  on  to  talk  of  the  various  traditions 
of  the  Greek  and  Roman  churches  with  what  seemed 
to  me  great  learning.  He  discussed  the  question 
with  such  a  wealth  of  special  knowledge,  that  the 
same  evening  I  could  not  recall  a  tenth  part  of  what 
he  had  said,  and  he  summed  it  all  up  by  declaring 
that  whatever  evidence  there  was,  seemed  to  him  to 
favor  the  idea  that  Jesus  was  personally  handsome. 

His  argument  left  me  unconvinced.  The  Silenus 
ugliness  of  Socrates  always  appeared  to  me  to  in- 
crease the  effect  of  that  death-scene  in  the  Phaedo, 
while  the  emphasis  laid  upon  the  personal  beauty 
of  Mahomet  seems  to  show  that  his  influence  was 
rather  one  of  personality  than  of  spirit. 

''Why  should  we  even  ask  ourselves  what  Jesus 
was  like?"  I  questioned.  "What  he  said  was  so 
ineffably  beautiful  that  we  assume  everything  else 
was  in  harmony  with  it." 

Renan  was  just  as  obstinate.  "We  must  agree 
to  disagree  on  that  matter,"  he  said  shortly,  "but 
if  that  is  your  chief  objection  to  my  Life  of  Jesus 
I  am  delighted,  for  you  admit  that  in  the  main  the 
book  is  very  interesting." 

Renan's  longing  for  praise  seemed  to  me  almost 
childish.  What  can  praise  or  blame  matter  to  one 
who  knows  he  has  done  the  work?  His  cawing  like 
a  hungry  baby-rook  for  a  morsel  of  praise,  stiffened 
me. 

"Oh,  no,"  I  said,  "it  is  not  my  chief  objection; 


RENAN  47 

it  is  only  one  small  instance  of  what  my  chief  ob- 
jection is.  The  main  thing  is  I  would  not  have  the 
story  added  to  or  improved  even,  in  any  way." 

"But  you  would  round  his  hfe  to  completeness?" 
Renan  said,  "fill  up  the  gaps  in  the  story?" 

"If  the  facts  are  implicit  in  the  story,"  I  said, 
"but  not  otherwise.  I  would  not  use  my  own  imagi- 
nation at  all." 

"I  do  not  quite  follow  you,"  he  replied.  "You 
would  not  have  one  merely  rewrite  the  story  set 
forth  in  the  Gospels?  Besides,  they  contradict  one 
another  again  and  again  on  essential  points.  You 
have  to  use  your  judgment,  your  sympathy,  your  im- 
agination even,  when  deciding  between  flagrant  con- 
tradictions." 

"Certainly,"  I  admitted,  not  wishing  to  give  away 
my  whole  thought,  "that  is  only  reasonable.  What 
I  mean  is  that  the  divine  figure  is  there  in  the  Gos- 
pels: at  least  it  seems  so  to  me.  It  may  be  relieved 
out  from  the  encumbering  dross  by  judgment  and 
sympathy;  but  should  not  be  altered." 

"But  in  what  way  have  I  altered  it?"  he  cried  Im- 
patiently. 

"Just  as  you  have  made  Him  beautiful,"  I  replied, 
"so  you  have  made  Him  heroic.  He  Is  the  saint  to 
me  and  not  the  hero;  in  Gethsemane  He  prays  that 
the  cup  may  pass  from  Him  and  yet  not  My  will 
but  Thine  he  done.  He  is  the  conscience  and  not 
the  courage  of  humanity,  or,  to  put  it  in  modern 


48        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

terms,  the  impulse  of  the  plant  upwards  to  the  light, 
and  not  the  struggle  of  the  plant  with  other  plants 
to  Hve." 

Renan  dismissed  my  objections  as  insignificant. 

"All  great  men  have  something  of  the  hero  in 
them,  and  so  had  Jesus  in  spite  of  his  self-abnega- 
tion. It  is  like  the  question  of  His  handsome  per- 
son. He  went  up  to  Jerusalem  though  He  must 
have  known  what  would  happen  to  Him;  He  dared 
death  then  as  He  endured  it  later — heroically. 

"But  of  course  all  these  are  small  matters.  The 
important  point  is,  have  I  understood  the  miracles 
aright?  Was  he  self-deceived  in  regard  to  them, 
or  did  he  deceive  others?  His  character  must  suffer 
in  the  one  case.  His  wisdom  in  the  other. 

"I  have  shown,  I  think,  that  it  was  the  people 
about  him  who  desired  the  miracles.  He  did  not 
like  wonders;  refused  indeed  to  give  His  enemies 
any  sign,  and  appears  only  to  have  yielded  to  the 
desire  of  the  disciples  now  and  then,  and  with  re- 
luctance. Again  and  again  He  requests  those  He 
has  healed  to  keep  His  work  secret,  to  tell  no  one. 
I  hope  you  agree  with  me  in  this  view  that  He  only 
became  a  wonder-worker  late  in  life,  and  against 
His  own  inclination." 

"I  am  prepared  to  go  further,"  I  confessed, 
"though  I  am  at  least  as  sceptical  as  you  are  about 
so-called  miracles.  I  feel  certain  that  He  healed  the 
sick  again  and  again :  that  virtue  went  out  of  Him  and 


RENAN  49 

was  felt  by  those  who  came  near  Him;  much  more 
by  those  who  touched  His  garment,  and  still  more 
by  those  who  had  His  divine  hands  laid  upon  them. 

"How  far  He  worked  what  we  call  miracles, 
I  don't  know,  or  even  care  greatly.  The  word  itself 
is  hard  to  define.  We  live  in  the  midst  of  miracles. 
How  the  unconscious  seed  can  carry  in  itself  the 
experience  of  a  thousand  thousand  years ;  how  a  baby 
can  hold  in  its  comprehension  all  the  thoughts  and 
peculiarities  of  its  myriad  forefathers,  and  thus  be 
an  epitome  of  the  race,  I  can't  even  imagine :  our 
living  and  being  are  a  perpetual  miracle.  Jesus  was, 
no  doubt,  disinclined  to  gratify  the  childish  desire  of 
His  disciples  for  signs  and  wonders;  but " 

"Then  I  was  right,"  cried  Renan,  "on  the  main 
point,  though  I  do  not  quite  follow  what  you  mean 
by  virtue  coming  out  of  him,  or  your  insistence  on 
his  divinity.     Surely  you  do  not  believe  in  that?" 

I  did  not  wish  to  push  our  disagreement  to  a  dis- 
pute. 

"We  have  all  something  of  the  divine  in  us,  have 
we  not?"  I  replied.  "Virtue  comes  out  of  you  even 
in  a  discussion,  cher  maitre. 

"One  cannot  but  agree  with  the  greater  part  of 
what  you  say  about  miracles  and  other  occurrences, 
and  you  have  said  it  all  wonderfully.  Every  one 
acknowledges  that  you  are  one  of  the  great  masters 
of  French  prose;  the  garment  of  your  thought  is  so 
easy,  so  graceful,  so  rhythmic.     Besides  you  have 


so        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

dared  to  appeal  to  the  heart,  and  yet  avoided  maw- 
kishness  by  deft  touches  of  irony — spangles  on  the 
robe." 

He  swallowed  it  all  greedily,  smiling  and  twirling 
his  thumbs.  The  "spangles"  on  the  robe  even, 
pleased  him.  The  theatricality  of  the  phrase  he  put 
down  to  my  weakness  in  French,  whereas  I  really 
meant  that  the  Parisian  touches  of  irony  —  "One 
can't  live  up  to  being  always  a  son  of  God" — were 
revolting  mistakes  in  a  life  of  Jesus,  and  the  touches 
of  amused  superiority  which  please  nearly  all 
Frenchmen,  offend  our  severer  tastes.  But  it  was 
not  worth  while  to  try  to  correct  his  illimitable 
conceit. 

It  now  remains  for  me  to  discover  the  reason 
of  Renan's  partial  failure;  to  show  why  he  was 
unable  to  see  Jesus  as  He  was.  I  might  do  this 
through  his  intellect  or  through  his  character,  or 
both.  I  should  perhaps  first  trace  his  philosophy 
to  its  sources  and  show  its  inadequacy,  demonstrate 
that  the  conclusions  on  which  his  mind  rested  were 
not  certainties,  as  he  imagined,  but  self-deceptions, 
that  at  bottom  he  was  an  absolute  infidel.  Incapable 
of  believing  in  miracles  or  in  prayer,  or  indeed  in 
virtue,  in  any  vital  distinction  between  good  and  evil. 
And  a  man  by  nature  incredulous  is  constitutionally 
Incapable  of  understanding  a  believer,  much  less  a 
prophet  or  a  saint. 


RENAN  51 

Renan  is  a  sort  of  glass  In  which  one  sees  the 
reflection  of  all  the  important  thought-waves  of  his 
time:  he  had  learnt  from  Kant  to  believe  in  the 
spiritual  or,  rather,  in  the  mental  world;  from  Hegel 
a  certain  tinge  of  mysticism  and  a  desire  to  reconcile 
contradictions  in  a  higher  synthesis;  but  it  was  Scho- 
penhauer's pessimism  which  had  affected  the  very 
current  of  his  blood.  All  this,  his  own  intellectual 
limitations  and  the  various  influences  which  had 
played  upon  him  from  different  angles,  so  to  speak, 
can  be  traced  in  his  philosophic  writings.  He  shows 
his  naive,  youthful  enthusiasm  in  The  Future  of 
Science,  and  his  later  complete  disillusion  in  Meta- 
physics and  its  Future,  and  in  the  famous  Letter  to 
Berthelot. 

A  glance  at  his  so-called  contradictions  will  lead 
us  to  the  heart  of  the  mystery.  One  critic  com- 
plains that  Renan's  contradictions  are  "wilful."  Or 
do  they  arise,  as  Renan  himself  explained,  from  a 
desire  to  show  all  the  different  facets  of  truth? 
Another  condemns  his  "liking  for  contradictions"  as 
having  degenerated  Into  a  trick  of  manner,  and  this 
Is  a  friendly  French  critic.  The  thinker  should 
resemble  a  lighthouse,  according  to  Renan,  and 
throw  the  white  radiance  now  through  green  and 
now  through  red  glasses  In  order  to  attract  the  In- 
attentive; but  the  high  seriousness  of  truth  hardly 
lends  Itself  to  such  illusion.  Many  of  Renan's  con- 
tradictions are  not  accidental  or  formal,  but  of  the 


52        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

essence;  the  assertions  of  a  Galllo  who  will  use  fact 
or  fiction  Indifferently  as  they  chance  to  suit  his 
immediate  purpose. 

His  treatment  of  Moses  is  typical  of  his  whole 
method.  First  of  all,  he  states  the  problem  admir- 
ably, without  shirking  any  of  Its  difficulties;  coolly, 
dispassionately,  as  a  scientist  and  historian  he  tells 
us  that  Moses,  unlike  Jesus,  Is  not  an  historical 
personage.  St.  Paul  assuredly  had  good  reason  for 
his  belief  that  Jesus  had  lived  and  had  suffered  on 
the  Cross,  and  St.  Paul  was  a  contemporary  whose 
good  faith  it  is  impossible  to  doubt.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  oldest  mention  of  Moses  occurs  four  or 
five  centuries  after  he  was  supposed  to  have  lived 
and  led  the  Israelites  out  of  Egypt.  No  one  could 
state  the  case  against  Moses  more  forcibly.  Renan 
even  asserts  that  the  whole  story  of  the  Exodus  Itself 
may  be  a  fable,  and  that  all  we  can  feel  sure  of 
is  the  bare  fact  that  the  Jews  left  Egypt  and  took 
possession  of  the  Holy  Land.  Nothing  could  be 
clearer  or  In  closer  accord  with  truth;,  but  as  soon 
as  Rcnan  begins  his  narrative  he  forgets  his  scep- 
ticism and  tells  us  of  the  "burning  bush,"  and  the 
way  the  bitter  waters  of  Marah  were  rendered  drink- 
able; he  will  even  point  out  the  place  where  the 
leaders  of  the  expedition  appear  to  him  to  have 
formed  precise  plans  for  the  conquest  of  Canaan. 
Renan  Is  a  sceptic  backed  by  an  artist,  and  as  artist 
he  must  have  affirmations  and  beliefs,  visions  even; 


RENAN  53 

and  so  extraordinary  contradictions  creep  into  his 
work.  He  is  like  one  of  those  lunatics  who  is 
utterly  indifferent  to  money  and  yet  persists  in  amass- 
ing false  coins  and  collecting  spurious  notes  on  the 
"Bank  of  Invention."  As  a  sceptic  and  critic  he 
will  tell  you  that  the  history  of  Samson  has  suffered 
by  being  touched  up  {d'etranges  retouches)  ;  twenty 
pages  further  on  the  artist  assures  you  that  the  story 
has  not  been  touched  at  all  {n'a  pas  ete  retoiichee) . 

The  truth  is  Renan  has  the  creative  imagination 
of  a  poet,  and  he  uses  the  fact  as  a  springboard  by 
means  of  which  he  may  rise  higher  into  the  blue. 

His  real  creed  is  to  be  found  in  his  philosophic 
Dialogues ;  they  start  with  what  he  regards  as 
"Certainties,"  then  pass  to  "Probabilities,"  and 
finally  rise  to  "Dreams."  But  Kenan's  most  cher- 
ished "certainties"  would  be  "dreams"  to  less 
imaginative  natures.  It  seems  certain  to  him  that 
"this  world  has  a  purpose  and  a  goal,"  that  "we 
are  the  playthings  of  a  higher  egotism  which  uses 
men  as  pawns  in  a  game,"  and  that  "we  are  often 
duped  cunningly  by  nature  to  fulfil  some  purpose 
which  transcends. all  our  imagining."  It  is  a  "cer- 
tainty" forsooth  that  nature  "is  moving  towards 
some  end";  it  is  a  "probability"  that  such  motion 
is  a  progress  not  only  through  the  ages,  but  from 
"world  to  world." 

And  if  you  ask  him  for  the  inspiring  cause  of 
this   evolutionary  process  or  for  the  objective  to 


54        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

which  we  are  tending,  he  will  confuse  things  with 
words,  and  assert  that  "this  cause  is  the  desire  to 
be,  the  thirst  for  consciousness,  the  necessity  that 
the  ideal  should  be  realized."  ("Cette  cause  fut  le 
desir  d'etre,  la  soif  de  conscience,  la  necessite  qu'il 
y  avait  a  ce  que  I'ideal  fut  represente.")  He  insists 
that  the  "evolution  of  the  ideal  is  at  once  the  object 
and  moving  cause  of  the  universe.  The  pure  idea 
is  only  a  potentiality;  matter  in  itself  is  powerless; 
the  idea  can  only  reach  consciousness  by  incarnating 
itself  in  matter."  And  then,  if  you  please,  he  calmly 
sums  up:  "everything  comes  from  matter;  but  it  is 
the  idea  which  is  the  soul,  the  animating  principle 
which  aspires  to  self-realization,  and  thus  reaches  to 
life — Voila  Dieul"  To  try  to  criticize  such  Hege- 
lian rhapsody  would  be  just  as  profitable  as  the  at- 
tempt to  dissect  moonbeams.  But  that  Foila  Dieu  is 
beyond  price,  a  jewel  of  French  art. 

It  must  be  perfectly  plain  to  any  careful  student 
that  Renan's  mind  is  saturated  with  opposing  and 
contradictory  hypotheses:  at  one  moment  he  is  in 
love  with  the  "idea"  of  Hegel,  at  the  next  with 
the  Darwinian  theory  of  evolution,  and  then  he 
falls  back  into  the  crudest  anthropomorphism  and 
talks  of  "the  object  and  purpose  of  the  universe" 
as  if  he  had  just  been  listening  to  a  sermon  by 
Bossuet. 

But  this  net-like  eclecticism  is  characteristic  of 
the  age,  and,  curiously  enough,  in  his  "Dreams" 


REN  AN  55 

Renan  reaches  beyond  his  own  time  to  the  thought 
of  our  day.  Starting  with  the  Idea  that  the  object 
of  the  universe  Is  an  ever  more  complete  self-con- 
sciousness, an  ever  increasing  vltallzatlon  of  matter 
by  thought,  Renan,  with  his  poetic  Imagination,  is 
forced  to  realize  this  abstract  purpose  by  clothing 
the  general  consciousness  In  a  personality  who,  con- 
centrating In  himself  all  human  knowledge,  becomes 
in  some  sort  superhuman.  Renan  invented  the 
Superman  before  Nietzsche.  But  It  is  a  mere  sup- 
position that  science  and  its  applications  will  fall 
to  the  control  of  an  ever  smaller  number  of  people 
as  Renan  believes.  None  of  the  myriad  discoveries 
of  our  time  has  this  esoteric  character;  none  of  the 
military  Inventions  tends  to  concentrate  power  in  the 
hands  of  an  individual;  the  Superman  is  just  as 
subjective  a  fancy  as  "the  aim  and  purpose  of  the 
universe,"  which  can  be  traced  from  aeon  to  aeon, 
and  from  planet  to  planet.  The  whole  thing  is 
a  bubble  blown  by  a  supersubtle  sceptic  who  will 
console  himself  for  the  shortcomings  and  obscurities 
of  reality  by  accepting  his  fancies  for  facts. 

And  just  as  In  Renan's  philosophy  one  Is  forced 
to  find  the  sceptic-artist  utterly  Indifferent  to  truth, 
so  In  his  plays  the  artist  nature  reveals  itself  with 
entire  frankness.  Again  and  again  one  is  brought 
up  with  a  shock  by  his  extraordinary,  abnormal 
sensuality.  Here  are  really  the  two  poles  between 
which  the  man   swings.      He  was  a   hopeless   un- 


56        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

believer,  and  at  the  same  time  given  over  to  all 
pleasures,  pleasures  of  thought,  pleasures  of  senti- 
ment (his  heroes  love  to  weep  like  women) ,  pleasures 
of  the  senses.  As  we  have  seen,  he  was  gross  in 
body,  ii^dolent  physically;  altogether  unable  to  appre- 
ciate finely  either  an  athlete  or  a  saint,  much  less 
a  hero.  His  plays  show  us  this  side  of  him  with 
astonishing  naivete.  One  needs  only  to  turn  over 
the  leaves  of  L'Abhesse  de  Jouarre  to  find  Renan 
in  his  habit  as  he  lived.  In  this  play  he  lets  himself 
go  and  reaches  the  nadir  of  absurdity.  The  Abbess, 
who  gives  herself  for  the  first  time  in  prison  to  the 
man  she  loves,  declares  in  the  morning  that  "fate 
never  accords  twice  to  any  human  being  such 
pleasure"  as  she  has  enjoyed.  Her  assertion  is  as 
general  as  her  experience  is  limited.  The  play  does 
not  need  further  description:  it  is  an  object-lesson 
in  the  ludicrous  weaknesses  of  abnormal  sensuality. 
Renan  believed  that  if  the  inhabitants  of  the 
world  were  informed  that  they  were  destined  to 
perish  within  two  or  three  days,  every  Man  Jack  of 
us  would  rush  at  some  Jill  or  other,  and  insist  on 
embracing  her  at  the  supreme  moment;  "the  last 
sigh  would  become  a  kiss,"  he  says,  "and  we  should 
all  'die  of  pleasure.'  "  Nothing  could  be  more 
ridiculously  absurd  or  further  from  English  notions. 
Some  men  would  meet  death  in  prayer;  some  in 
cheering  their  loved  ones ;  some  with  smiling  courage ; 
others    with    cursings    and    despair,    or    in    sullen 


REN  AN  57 

patience.  It  Is  safe  to  say  that  not  one  in  a  hundred 
would  carry  out  Kenan's  preposterous  forecast. 

He  takes  himself  for  a  measure  of  the  ideal, 
and  he  is  not  justified.  The  reason  of  his  failure 
is  unmistakable.  First  of  all,  he  is  a  Frenchman, 
and  the  French  are  somewhat  obsessed  by  the  sense 
of  sex,  apt  to  be  too  much  given  to  sensual  delights. 
Then,  too,  Renan  was  brought  up  as  a  priest,  and 
his  natural  desires  thereby  subjected  to  unnatural 
restraint.  In  consequence  of  this  he  seems  to  have 
found  sex-attraction  quite  irresistible;  he  Is  weaker 
even  than  the  ordinary  Frenchman;  he  does  not  only 
yield  to  temptation;  he  seeks  it  out. 

There  is  one  sentence  of  Renan's  which  I  regard 
as  his  most  characteristic  confession.  He  declares 
that  "modern  philosophy  will  find  its  last  expression 
in  the  drama,  or,  rather,  in  the  opera :  for  music 
and  the  illusions  of  the  lyric  stage  are  admirably 
adapted  to  continue  the  thought  into  the  vague 
region  which  lies  beyond  the  reach  of  words." 

("La  philosophic  modern  aura  de  meme  sa  der- 
niere  expression  dans  un  drame,  ou  plutot  dans  un 
opera;  car  la  musique  et  les  illusions  de  la  scene 
lyrique  serviraient  admirablement  a  continuer  la 
pensee,  au  moment  oij  la  parole  ne  suffit  plus  a 
Texprimer.") 

I  always  think  that  if  Renan  had  had  any  gift 
for  music  he  would  have  expressed  himself  most 
fully  in  some  modern  opera.     In  reahty  he  was 


58        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

a  sort  of  sister-soul  to  Gounod,  and  might  have 
written  the  passion-music  of  another  Faust. 

His  limitations  can  best  be  seen  in  his  work  on 
St.  Paul.  For  there  he  is  face  to  face  with  a  real 
person,  and  we  can  judge  him  as  against  a  known 
standard.  Paul  is  not  only  a  real  historical  person- 
age; but  he  lends  reality  to  the  other  chief  actors 
in  the  world-drama,  to  Peter  and  James  and  John, 
even  to  Jesus  Himself — all  owe  something  to  Paul's 
intense  vitality.  For  Paul  is  something  more  than 
an  historical  figure  and  contemporary  witness  of 
the  Gospel  story;  he  is  his  own  biographer,  and  has 
revealed  himself  in  certain  of  the  Epistles  with  an 
extraordinary  particularity  and  vividness.  We  know 
his  beliefs  and  his  opinions  on  the  most  important 
questions;  we  can  see  them  growing  even,  for  his 
letters  were  dictated,  and  have  therefore  all  the 
characteristics  of  familiar  and  passionate  speech. 
Paul  has  given  us  a  series  of  photographs  of  his 
very  soul,  all  the  truer  and  more  interesting  because 
they  are  unstudied  and  unconscious;  we  know  his 
indignations  and  his  lovingkindness,  his  blessings, 
and  his  cursings,  his  bold  self-assertion  and  profound 
humility,  the  flaming  spirit  of  him,  and  the  great 
tender  heart. 

His  style  is  the  man.  What  eloquence  there  is 
in  the  unadorned,  bare  enumeration  of  his  labors 
and  sufferings;  what  lyric  power  in  his  apocalypse 
of  the   resurrection;   what  grace   and  charm   and 


RENAN  59 

sweet-thoughted  poetry  In  his  praise  of  charity 
(love).  And  yet,  when  not  upborne  on  the  broad 
wings  of  some  Intense  emotion,  what  a  style !  Is 
there  anything  In  all  literature  so  Inchoate,  so  bar- 
barous? What  a  mixture  of  conflicting  metaphors 
and  repetitions;  of  violent  assertions  and  of  hair- 
splitting quibbles;  here  an  elaborate  argument 
broken  off  In  the  middle  and  left  unfinished;  there 
antitheses  of  thought  dragged  in  by  assonances  of 
language;  quotations  from  the  Old  Testament  tossed 
together  with  stories  of  travel  and  shipwreck,  all 
foaming  before  us  like  a  mountain-torrent  In  spate — -. 
headlong,  muddy,  irresistible. 

Yet  no  one  has  pictured  himself  In  every  line  as 
this  man  has  done.  We  recognize  his  very  voice, 
his  Jewish  accent,  his  contempt  of  grammar,  his 
harping  on  one  or  two  favorite  words;  his  vehe- 
ment, abrupt,  magnificent  talk  like  hot  scoriae  shot 
through  with  veins  of  gold.  He  moves  before  us 
and  casts  a  shadow;  the  little,  stout,  bow-legged 
Jew,  with  the  bald  head  and  black  beard,  the 
prominent,  hooked  nose  and  thick  eyebrows,  and 
the  glowing,  inspiring  eyes ;  are  we  not  told  that  at 
one  moment  he  seemed  like  a  man  and  at  another 
had  "the  face  of  an  angel." 

In  a  thousand  pages  Boswell  has  not  managed 
to  show  us  Johnson  as  clearly  as  Paul  discovers 
himself  to  us  In  a  couple  of  letters.  There  is  no 
man  In  history  or  In  literature  so  well  known  to 


6o        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

us,  no  other  figure  of  such  intense  vitality,  moving 
in  so  searching  a  light. 

Renan  has  his  own  way  of  classifying  great  men, 
and  Paul  does  not  find  favor  In  his  sight.  "In  the 
sacred  procession  of  humanity,"  he  says,  "the  good 
man  comes  first,  and  after  him  the  servant  of 
Truth,  the  savant,  or  philosopher,  and  then  the 
priest  of  Beauty,  the  artist  or  the  poet.  .  .  . 
Jesus  appears  to  us  with  a  halo,  an  ideal  of  good- 
ness and  beauty.  But  what  was  Paul?  He  was  not 
a  saint.  The  dominant  trait  of  his  character  is 
not  goodness;  he  was  proud,  harsh,  obstinate;  he 
defended  himself  and  asserted  himself;  he  used 
wounding  words;  he  thought  himself  always  in  the 
right;  stuck  to  his  own  opinion  and  alienated  many. 
He  was  not  a  savant.  .  .  .  He 
was  not  a  poet.  .  .  .  What  was  he?  A  great 
man  of  action:  a  fearless,  enthusiastic,  conquering 
spirit,  a  missionary,  a  zealot.  .  .  .  But  the 
man  of  action,  even  at  his  highest  when  struggling 
for  a  noble  cause  Is  not  so  close  to  God  as  he  who 
spends  himself  In  the  service  of  the  Good,  the  True, 
or  the  Beautiful,  .  .  .  Paul  Is  inferior  to  Peter 
or  to  St.  Francis.  .  .  .  He  Is  like  Luther;  the 
same  violence  of  speech,  the  same  passion,  the  same 
energy,  the  same  noble  independence,  the  same 
fanatical  attachment  to  a  thesis  which  he  regards 
as  absolute  and  eternal  truth." 

Interesting  as   all   this  is,   it  is  Inadequate   and 


RENAN  6i 

unfair:  a  judgment  of  Paul  to-day  must  at  least 
found  Itself  on  the  judgment  of  the  past  eighteen 
centuries:  we  are  prepared  for  a  modification  of 
that  judgment;  but  not  for  a  contradiction  of  it. 
And  what  is  the  judgment  of  the  centuries  about 
Paul?  Let  us  listen  to  Scherer,  who  is  a  safer  guide 
on  such  a  matter  than  Renan.  After  telling  us  that 
Paul  gave  himself  much  trouble  and  wasted  a  great 
deal  of  eloquence  in  order  to  put  himself  among  the 
disciples  of  Jesus,  Scherer  decides  that  Paul  was 
"greater  than  any  of  the  twelve,"  and  he  adds 
boldly,  grounding  himself  on  that  secular  judgment 
of  which  I  have  spoken,  "posterity  regards  Paul  as 
the  bravest  of  the  soldiers  of  Christ,  the  first  of 
the  Apostles,  the  immortal  missionary  to  the  Gen- 
tiles." 

Renan  knows  all  this;  no  one  better,  but  the 
knowledge  does  not  conciliate  him :  he  is  an  amiable, 
pleasure-loving  unbeliever,  a  French  artist,  who 
touches  sainthood,  so  to  speak,  only  through  soft 
tolerance. 

The  daring  and  force  of  Paul;  his  devotion  to 
the  truth  as  shown  for  example  in  his  reproof  of 
Peter,  and  in  his  touching  confession  of  his  own 
nervous  weakness  and  sexual  impotence;  his  im- 
mitigable resolution,  his  stubborn-proud  poverty,  and 
self-denial  are  all  Intolerable  to  Renan. 

"Paul  was  too  aggressive,"  he  cries  again  and 


62        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

again;  "he  had  not  the  persuasiveness,  the  tender- 
ness, the  gentleness  of  Jesus." 

That  is  true  to  some  extent;  but,  as  Scherer  has 
well  said,  "Paul  is  the  complement  of  Jesus:  Paul 
is  nearer  to  us;  he  is  of  our  flesh  and  our  spirit, 
and  we  are  accordingly  better  able  to  measure  his 
greatness." 

Renan  does  not  overlook  the  great  chapter  on 
Charity,  or  Paul's  constant  solicitude  for  the  faith- 
ful, but  he  will  not  accept  anything  as  proof  of  the 
great  Apostle's  exceeding  tenderness  of  heart. 

In  fine,  Renan's  portrait  of  Jesus  is,  as  I  have 
tried  to  show,  a  French  portrait;  but  still  it  is 
a  portrait  inspired  by  sympathy  and  a  certain  com- 
prehension; his  picture  of  Paul  is  a  caricature;  he 
had  no  love  for  the  heroic  fighter,  no  understanding 
of  his  unique  value  and  importance.  Without  Paul, 
Christianity,  it  seems  to  me,  might  have  perished 
in  obscurity  as  a  flower  too  fragile-fair  for  this  harsh, 
unfriendly  world. 

Renan  does  not  even  notice  the  most  astonishing 
thing  in  Paul's  history — the  confession  in  which  Paul 
discovers  his  own  defect  relentlessly.  Paul  was  con- 
verted by  Jesus  Himself.  The  first  thing  he  should 
have  done,  one  imagines,  was  to  hurry  to  Jerusalem 
to  interview  the  disciples,  to  talk  with  the  brethren 
and,  above  all,  with  the  mother  of  the  Master,  and 
thus  collect  at  first  hand  every  scrap  of  evidence, 
every  particle  of  knowledge  that  could  throw  light 


RENAN  63 

upon  the  Divine  Figure.  It  would  then  have  been 
his  duty  and  his  joy  to  have  set  forth  the  whole  story 
in  the  most  complete  and  convincing  way. 

Paul  did  nothing  of  the  sort;  he  went  off  into  the 
desert,  he  tells  us,  for  three  years  by  himself;  as  an 
unbeliever  would  say,  to  evolve  Jesus  out  of  his 
own  internal  consciousness.  And  when  at  length 
he  went  to  Jerusalem  it  was  only  for  a  casual  visit 
of  a  fortnight  and  not  as  a  pilgrimage  to  the  Holy 
of  Hohes. 

What  a  book  Paul  could  have  written  about  Jesus, 
the  Christ,  with  the  knowledge  he  might  have 
gathered  had  he  wished;  Paul  with  his  passionate 
soul  and  his  genius  for  expression!  He  was  the 
greatest  man  then  living  on  this  earth,  and  he  might 
have  given  us  a  book  as  much  finer  than  the  New 
Testament  as  the  New  is  finer  than  the  Old:  The 
Life  of  Jesus  by  Paul  would  have  been  the  Gospel 
of  humanity  for  three  or  four  thousand  years.  It 
was  Paul  whom  Dante  should  have  charged  with 
"the  great  refusal." 

This  confession  of  Paul  makes  several  things  plain 
to  us.  First  of  all,  he  must  have  known  a  good 
deal  about  Jesus  and  his  preaching,  even  when  he 
was  persecuting  His  followers.  Again  and  again 
he  must  have  been  pierced  by  this  shaft  of  divine 
wisdom  and  by  that;  suddenly  he  was  stricken  to  the 
heart.  He  needed  no  further  knowledge :  Jesus  had 
taught  him  to  take  love  as  the  supreme,  the  infallible 


64        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

guide,  and  in  a  moment  he  had  learned  the  lesson; 
the  light  blinded  him.  Paul  then  must  have  been 
nearly  on  Christ's  level — a  fact  surely  borne  out  by 
the  divine  chapter  on  Charity.  It  was  Paul  who 
took,  the  gold  of  Christ's  Gospel,  mixed  it  with  hard 
alloy,  broke  it  up  into  convenient  forms,  and  so  gave 
it  currency  among  men. 

I  always  avoided  talking  to  Renan  about  Paul: 
I  did  not  want  to  dispute  with  him  again,  so  I  con- 
tented myself  with  praise  of  his  learning,  and  the 
immense  labors  he  had  undergone,  and  left  It  at 
that. 

It  was  impossible  not  to  be  grateful  to  him  for 
what  he  had  done:  why  should  one  be  annoyed 
with  him  for  being  what  he  was?  His  Life  of  Jesus 
is  there  and  holds  the  field  till  a  better  shall  appear, 
and  a  better  is  not  likely  to  be  written  for  many 
a  year  to  come. 

For  both  as  a  scientific  historian  and  an  artist- 
writer,  Renan  is  In  the  first  rank.  I  have  dealt 
mainly  with  his  shortcoming  as  an  artist,  for  every 
one  is  acquainted  with  his  extraordinary  achieve- 
ment, and  in  the  same  way  I  have  tried  to  show 
some  of  the  mistakes  into  which  his  duality  of  nature 
led  him.  It  is  only  fair  therefore  to  remark  that 
now  and  again  the  scientific  spirit  of  our  time  found 
perfect  expression  in  his  pages.  He  has  a  passage 
on   the   immortality  of  the   soul,   which  might  be 


RENAN  65 

recommended  to  all  those  who  are  Inclined  to  take 
their  desires  as  a  forecast  of  fulfilment.    He  says : 

"The  belief  in  the  splrltuahty  of  the  soul  and 
in  a  personal  Immortality,  far  from  being  a  product 
of  profound  reflection,  Is  at  bottom  a  relic  of  the 
childish  conceptions  of  the  savage  who  Is  incapable 
of  careful  analysis  of  a  mental  process.  Primitive 
man  In  his  naive  realism  Imagines  a  soul  In  whatever 
moves;  he  speaks  therefore  of  the  spirit  of  the  fire 
or  the  spirit  of  lightning." 

Immortality  to  Renan  Is  nothing  more  than  the 
shadow  cast  by  desire,  and  the  Happy  Hunting 
Grounds,  or  the  jewellers'  Heaven,  are  only  the 
mirage  of  unsatisfied  appetite. 

The  truth  about  Renan  holds  praise  enough  for 
most  mortals.  He  approached  his  great  task  with 
an  extraordinary  stock  of  learning  and  a  far  rarer 
fount  of  admiration  and  loving  sympathy,  and  though 
born  a  pleasure-loving  sceptic  In  an  incredulous  age 
and  of  a  faithless  people,  he  nevertheless  came  Into 
more  Intimate  relations  with  Jesus  the  Christ  than 
any  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Church,  and  has  given 
us  a  better  picture  of  the  Divine  Master  than  can 
be  found  anywhere  outside  the  Bible — "By  their 
fruits  ye  shall  know  them." 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER 

"Opposition  makes  the  wise  man  mad." — Blake. 

IT  was  the  report  of  the  trial  with  Ruskin  which 
first  made  me  familiar  with  the  name  of 
Whistler.  His  answers  under  cross-examination 
pleased  me  mightily;  proved  he  was  a  man  of  cour- 
age and  capacity.  The  condemnation  of  his  work  by 
popular  painters  convinced  me  that  he  would  not 
have  been  attacked  so  bitterly  by  the  mediocrities 
had  he  not  been  a  man  of  genius.  Ruskin's  prepos- 
terous fling,  and  its  success  and  the  favor  shown 
him  by  the  crowd  filled  me  with  contempt  for  the 
critic  whom  till  then  I  had  admired,  to  a  certain 
extent,  for  his  beautiful  rhythmic  prose. 

When  I  first  settled  in  London  in  the  early  eighties 
I  was  eager  to  meet  Whistler:  though  I  didn't 
dream  at  that  time  that  he  was  a  genius  in  the  high 
sense  of  the  word,  the  English  leader  of  a  new 
artistic  renascence.  With  the  bias  of  the  writer, 
I  thought  the  intellectual  leaders  should  be  men  of 
letters  and  should  handle  the  greatest  medium,  that 
of  words,  and  not  merely  color  and  form. 

Naturally,    therefore,    I    first    came    to    know 

66 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER    67 

Whistler  through  his  Hterary  talent  and  wit,  and 
without  this  ladder  would  probably  not  have  reached 
comprehension  for  a  long  time;  but  even  at  first 
my  opinion  of  him  was  far  higher  than  the  opinions 
I  heard  about  me.  He  was  always  quarrelling, 
I  was  told,  a  peculiar  little  fellow,  inordinately  con- 
ceited, and  bitter  without  reason — "a  tongue  like  a 
whiplash,  and  very  American,"  was  the  usual  sum- 
mary verdict. 

At  first  sight  I  was  struck,  as  I  imagine  every 
one  was  struck,  by  his  appearance;  an  alert,  wiry 
little  person  of  five  feet  four  or  five;  using  a  single 
eyeglass  and  very  neatly  dressed,  though  always 
with  something  singular  in  his  attire — the  artist's 
self-conscious  protest  which  gave  him  a  certain  exotic 
flavor  and  individuality.  He  wore  his  abundant 
curly  black  hair  rather  long,  and  just  over  the  fore- 
head a  little  lock  of  quite  white  hair  like  a  plume; 
in  the  street  a  French  top  hat — a  stove-pipe,  as  it  is 
called — with  a  straight  brim  which  shouted:  "I'm 
French,  and  proud  of  it !"  at  the  passers  by. 

The  second  or  third  time  I  met  him  I  noticed  that 
his  features  were  well  shaped:  both  chin  and  fore- 
head broad;  the  eyes  remarkable,  piercing,  and 
aggressive;  a  greying  black  moustache,  inclined  to 
curl  tightly,  added  a  note  of  defiance.  Though  they 
were  not  really  alike,  the  expression  of  his  face 
reminded  me  of  Edmond  de  Goncourt  and  Tour- 
genief's  description  of  his  eyes:  "luisants  et  sombres 


68        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

et  pas  bons  du  tout"  (shining,  sombre  eyes,  anything 
but  kindly).  Whistler's  eyes  were  grey-blue  and 
gimlet-keen — "anything  but  kindly,"  and  the  mous- 
tache and  carriage  intensified  the  cocky  challenge  of 
the  fighter:  Whistler  always  reminded  me  of  a 
bantam. 

In  every  assembly  he  always  stood  apart;  with 
a  certain  perky  distinction;  an  unsparing,  frank  critic: 
one  talked  to  him,  drew  him  out  expecting  incisive, 
caustic  comment. 

One  day  he  asked  me  to  breakfast:  I  accepted, 
for  he  piqued  my  curiosity;  I  wanted  to  know  more 
of  him,  felt  certain  he  had  something  new  to  say; 
and  I  was  eager  to  hear.  At  the  breakfast  I  met 
five  or  six  society  people — notably  Lady  Archie 
Campbell,  a  very  enthusiastic  admirer  of  the  master. 
In  the  course  of  the  breakfast  some  one  asked  Whis- 
tler what  he  thought  of  Frank  Holl,  the  English 
portrait  painter  who  had  had  some  vogue,  it 
appeared,  a  little  earlier. 

"A  talent,  not  a  genius,  Holl,  quite  English,  you 
know;  content  with  the  colored  photograph  kind  of 
thing  that  all  the  old  fellows  did,  and  some  of  'em 
did  better.  Art's  not  imitation,  that's  clear,  eh?" 
and  his  eyes  probed. 

The  wilfulness  and  quickness  of  the  man  were 
at  odds  with  the  drawling  American  accent;  he 
puzzled  me  a  little,  but  even  then  I  was  ready  to 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER    69 

go  with  him  a  good  way;  art,  I  thought,  was  Inter- 
pretation, not  merely  imitation,  and  I  said  so. 

"That's  It,"  Whistler  took  me  up  abruptly,  "a 
personal  Interpretation  or  impression,  blessed  with 
beauty  and  brevity,  eh?"  and  again  his  eyes  bored  in. 

His  talk  was  suggestive;  but  a  little  one-sided,  I 
thought,  not  realizing  then  fully  how  much  greater 
in  art  the  half  Is  than  the  whole. 

Somewhat  later  I  asked  him  a  little  maliciously 
what  he  thought  of  Oscar  Wilde. 

"I  have  his  scalp,"  he  laughed,  "but  am  not  proud 
of  it:  Oscar  is  Imitator,  not  artist." 

"He  may  outgrow  that,"  I  remarked. 

"The  sponge  is  always  sponging,"  was  Whistler's 
quick  retort. 

He  was  taken  away  by  Lady  Archie  Campbell, 
who  wanted  to  tell  him  how  much  she  admired  the 
portrait  of  a  girl  In  his  studio.  He  took  us  to  see 
it,  frankly  Interested  without  a  trace  of  pose  or  self- 
consciousness;  though  he  showed  a  marked  deference 
to  the  great  lady  which  amused  me.  As  soon  as 
he  knew  you  a  little  he  couldn't  help  telling  you 
that  he  had  been  a  student  at  West  Point,  a  military 
cadet;  he  took  the  romantic,  chivalric  view  of  things 
by  preference;  yet  he  spoke  of  his  work  with  curious 
detachment.  In  jerked-out  phrases,  astoundingly  sin- 
cere in  their  simplicity,  and  astoundingly  veracious 
as  well. 

"One  wants  the  spirit,  the  aroma,  don't  ye  know?" 


70        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

and  he  glanced  away  from  the  picture  to  see  If  we 
understood.  As  no  one  answered  he  Insisted:  "If 
you  paint  a  young  girl,  youth  should  scent  the  room: 
a  thinker,  thoughts  should  be  In  the  air;  an  aroma 
of  the  personality.  .  .  .  And  with  all  that  It 
should  be  a  picture,  a  pattern,  a  harmony  only  a 
painter  could  conceive.  ...  I  sometimes  say 
an  arrangement  in  black  and  white,  or  blue  and 
gold,  don't  ye  know?"  The  eyes  gimletted  one: 
"Do  they  understand?"  the  eyes  seemed  to  ask,  "the 
dullards — do  they  even  know  that  each  art  has  Its 
own  grammar  and  its  own  aim?" 

This  first  real  talk  showed  me  that  Whistler  was 
an  original  artist,  a  force  to  be  reckoned  with,  and 
at  the  same  time  he  was  sympathetic  to  me;  his 
courage  and  quickness  were  obvious;  his  conceit  justi- 
fied, his  vanity  harmless,  even  his  frankness  seemed 
to  argue  a  kindly  nature. 

His  famous  Ten  o'clock  lecture  confirmed  my 
judgment,  and  put  him  definitely  on  a  pedestal,  he 
talked  with  the  sincerity  and  authority  of  a  great 
artist.  The  perky  figure  on  the  platform;  the  ex- 
quisitely appropriate  speech — now  quick,  pointed 
sentences  darting  like  rapier-thrusts,  now  the  linking 
melody  of  rhythmic  phrases — all  alike  excellent. 
The  inimitable  cheeky  delivery  of  his  attacks  made 
him  delightfully  real  and  vital;  the  insight  and 
authority  of  his  message  held  one:  a  modern  master, 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER    71 

I  said  to  myself,  human  to  the  heart  and  yet  a 
master. 

Again  and  again  his  humor  flashed;  the  Experts 
"sombre  of  mien  and  wise  with  the  wisdom  of  books 
speculating  in  much  writing  upon  the  great 
worth  of  bad  work  .  .  ."  ;  the  Critic  who  "never 
sees  the  masterpiece  at  all"  :  and  finally  the  Preacher 
"appointed!  .  .  .  Sage  of  the  Universities 
learned  In  many  matters,  and  of  much 
experience  in  all,  save  his  subject  .  .  .  bringing 
powers  of  persuasion  and  polish  of  language  to 
prove — nothing.    ..." 

The  most  brilliant  persiflage  of  English  pedantry 
ever  written,  and  written  by  a  painter  I 

And  when  he  spoke  of  his  art  and  of  the  artist 
as  the  high-priest  of  the  mysteries  of  Beauty,  a  grave 
emotion  colored  his  words,  and  the  sentences  ar- 
ranged themselves  cunningly,  evoking  unforgettable 
pictures. 

"The  artist,"  he  said,  "does  not  confine  himself 
to  purposeless  copying,  without  thought,  each  blade 
of  grass,  as  commended  by  the  Inconsequent,  but,  in 
the  long  curve  of  the  narrow  leaf,  corrected  by  the 
straight  tall  stem,  he  learns  how  grace  is  wedded 
to  dignity,  how  strength  enhances  sweetness,  that 
elegance  shall  be  the  result.    ..." 

"Through  his  brain,  as  through  the  last  alembic, 
is  distilled  the  refined  essence  of  that  thought  which 


72        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

began  with  the  Gods,  and  which  they  left  him  to 
carry  out." 

"Set  apart  by  them  to  complete  their  works,  he 
produces  that  wondrous  thing  called  the  masterpiece, 
which  surpasses  in  perfection  all  that  they  have  con- 
trived in  what  is  called  Nature;  and  the  Gods  stand 
by  and  marvel,  and  perceive  how  far  more  beautiful 
is  the  Venus  of  Melos  than  was  their  own  Eve." 

That  lecture  won  me  to  complete  sympathy;  the 
comments  of  the  audience  and  the  Press  exasperated 
me:  no  one  seemed  to  see  that  the  speech  was  the 
greatest  ever  heard  in  London.  Even  Oscar  Wilde 
pooh-poohed  my  praise  of  it  as  exaggerated;  it  had, 
however,  made  one  convert. 

Whistler's  fiery  combativeness  now  excited  in  me 
nothing  but  approval.  He's  had  a  pretty  hard 
time,  I  thought,  as  all  great  men  are  sure  to  have 
everywhere,  and  most  of  all  in  England,  where  the 
pillory  is  specially  reserved  for  great  artists.  He's 
evidently  "the  wicked  animal"  of  the  well-known 
French  proverb,  "who  defends  himself  when  he's 
attacked,"  and  he  has  been  attacked  so  often,  and 
his  courage  is  so  high  that  he's  always  ready  to  take 
the  offensive.  In  the  Ten  o'clock  he  gave  his  own 
portrait:  "The  Artist  has  always  cause  to  be  merry 
at  the  'pompous  pretention  and  solemn  silliness'  that 
surrounds  him,  for  Art  and  Joy  go  together  with 
bold  openness,  and  high  head  and  ready  hand — fear- 
ing naught." 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER    73 

One  evening  he  dined  with  me  and  talked  with 
extraordinary  animation  and  eloquence  about  his 
art.  I  noticed  that  he  was  a  different  man  when 
dining  almost  alone  and  when  there  was  a  large 
party.  By  himself  he  was  without  affectation  or 
aggressiveness,  but  as  soon  as  there  was  an  audience 
he  wanted  to  take  the  floor  and  monopolize  the  con- 
versation. 

On  another  occasion  there  were  half  a  dozen  of 
us,  and  Whistler  held  forth  about  his  discovery  of 
the  Thames,  as  he  called  it.  A  personage  at  the 
table  rather  resented  the  suggestion  that  no  one  had 
ever  seen  the  beauty  in  mists  and  fogs  because  It 
had  not  been  painted  before,  and  the  little  difference 
grew  somewhat  acrid.  At  length  the  great  man 
remarked  that  "conceit  was  no  proof  of  ability." 
Whistler  took  him  up  sharply: 

"Quite  right,  conceit  is  what  we  call  the  other 
fellow's  self-respect,  don't  ye  know?" 

"It's  the  excessive  egotism  I  dislike,"  grumbled 
the  great  person,  turning  away  and  beginning 
pointedly  to  speak  to  the  host. 

Some  one  said  something  encouraging  to  Whistler, 
who  remarked  in  the  air: 

"Yes,  yes,  he  forgot  himself,  but  then  he  is  quite 
right  to  forget  what  isn't  worth  remembering." 

Whistler  was  certainly  "a  first-rate  fighting  man." 
Often  he  attacked  without  justification.  I  may  be 
allowed  to  give  one  characteristic  example  when  I 


74        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

could  give  twenty.  Every  one  knows  the  bare  facts 
about  Swinburne's  famous  article  on  his  works  which 
appeared  in  The  Fortnighlly  Review  for  June,  1888. 

Whistler's  biographers,  the  Pennells,  have  decided 
that  "it  cannot  be  denied  that  he  had  every  reason 
for  seeing  a  challenge  in  Swinburne's  article.  He 
was  stung  to  the  quick,  but  even  in  his  anger  he 
couldn't  forget  the  friendship  of  the  past." 

The  tmth  is,  and  there  can  be  no  breach  of  con- 
fidence now  in  publishing  the  fact,  that  Whistler 
asked  for  the  article.  Mr.  Theodore  Watts  was 
approached  and  told  that  Whistler  would  be  very 
glad  indeed  if  Swinburne,  who  had  known  his  work 
for  years,  would  say  what  he  thought  about  it.  It 
was  pointed  out  that  Whistler  hadn't  the  position 
that  his  great  talent  deserved,  and  that  it  would  be 
an  act  of  kindness  on  Swinburne's  part  to  help  him 
to  wider  recognition.  Swinburne  was  good  enough 
to  do  what  was  asked  of  him. 

Immediately  after  the  article  appeared  came 
Whistler's  contemptuous  note  in  The  JForld,  in 
which,  criticizing  Swinburne,  he  spoke  of  the  "scien- 
tific irrelevancies  and  solemn  popularities  of  a  serious 
and  ungrateful  Sage,  whose  mind  was  not  narrowed 
by  knowledge." 

The  last  paragraph  of  his  letter  ran: 

"Thank  you,  my  dear!  I  have  lost  a  confrere; 
but  then,  I  have  found  an  acquaintance — one  Alger- 
non Swinburne — 'outsider' — Putney." 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER    75 

It  was  an  outrageous  response  to  an  act  of  kind- 
ness, and,  naturally  enough,  Swinburne  was  very 
much  annoyed. 

At  the  time  only  a  few  knew  of  the  dignified 
kind  letter  Whistler  wrote  to  Swinburne  before  pub- 
lishing his  sneer  in  The  World,  the  letter  published 
in  The  Gentle  Art  under  the  title  Et  tu  Brute,  in 
which  he  talks  to  Swinburne  In  the  proper  spirit: 

*'Who  are  you,  deserting  your  Muse,  that  you 
should  insult  my  Goddess  with  familiarity  and  the 
manners  of  approach  common  to  the  reasoners  in 
the  market-place?  .  .  .  Shall  I  be  brought  to 
the  bar  by  my  own  blood,  and  be  borne  false  witness 
against  before  the  plebeian  people?" 

He  requested  Swinburne  to  stick  to  his  fine  poetry 
and  not  "stray  about  blindly  in  his  brother's  flower- 
beds and  bruise  himself!" 

But  good  as  this  private  letter  is,  it  still  seems 
to  me  not  to  be  justified,  for  Whistler  had  asked  for 
the  article  and  should  have  been  content  with  It 

After  all,  Swinburne  praised  Whistler's  painting 
warmly,  as  far  as  he  could  understand  it,  and  at 
the  time  Swinburne  as  a  poet  stood  far  higher  In 
popular  esteem  than  Whistler  as  a  painter.  Swin- 
burne's paper  unquestionably  did  Whistler  a  very 
considerable  service,  and  his  good  intent  was  111 
rewarded  by  that  contemptuous  bitter  letter  in  Tlie 
World  which  was  all  the  public  knew  of  the  matter. 

I  didn't  overestimate  the  importance  of  the  affair. 


76        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

but  when  next  I  met  Whistler,  which  happened  to  be 
at  a  friend's  table,  I  suppose  he  must  have  felt  that 
I  was  not  so  enthusiastically  cordial  as  I  had  been, 
for  he  attacked  me  with  a  spice  of  malevolence. 
He  waited,  I  remember,  till  the  dinner  was  finished 
and  the  ladies  had  retired.  When  the  host  came 
up  to  our  end  of  the  table  he  had  Whistler  on  his 
right  just  opposite  me.  Suddenly  Whistler  took 
up  something  I  had  said. 

"Your  appointment  as  editor  of  The  Fortnightly 
set  every  one  guessing,"  he  began:  "is  he  by  any 
chance  a  man  of  genius,  or  just  another  of  the  able 
editors,  don't  ye  know !  always  to  be  found  by  the 
dozen  In  merry  England?  Well,  we  all  wondered 
for  a  little  while." 

The  guests  were  all  eyes  and  ears:  Whistler's 
reputation  being  established. 

"Of  course,  every  one  knew  how  a  genius  would 
edit  such  a  review  after  Mr.  John  Morley.  First 
of  all  would  come  a  most  astonishing  number;  a 
reckless  criticism  of  some  great  painter  by  a  poet; 
then  a  poem  by  a  painter,  something  novel,  don't 
ye  know,  the  caricature  of  a  bishop  by  Carlo  Pelli- 
grini,  something  unexpected — amazing.     .     .     ." 

"All  the  world  would  rush  to  buy  the  next  month's 
number;  but  there  would  be  none  to  be  found;  the 
editor  would  be  resting  or  gone  to  Monte  Carlo. 
The  month  after,  another  gorgeous  surprise !  But 
no!  you've  not  done  it  in  the  brilliant  erratic  way 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER    77 

of  genius.  Every  month  the  review  appears  regu- 
larly, just  what  one  looks  for,  a  work  of  high-class 
English  mediocrity:  lamentable,  you  know,  quite 
lamentable." 

Every  one  laughed  as  the  master  repeated  again 
and  again  scornfully,  "high-class  mediocrity." 

For  some  time  I  tried  to  parry  the  attack,  cover- 
ing myself  with  my  youth  and  inexperience;  but 
Whistler  only  laughed  triumphantly,  repeating, 
"honest  mediocrity,   well-meaning,   don't  ye  know! 

industrious  and  all  that;  but "  and  the  forefinger 

pointed  the  barb. 

At  length  anger  gave  me  better  counsel. 

"Strange,"  I  said,  "how  your  views  of  art,  Master, 
are  echoed  in  Paris.  I  was  talking  with  Degas  the 
other  day;  you  know,  he,  too,  is  a  great  painter  with 
a  tongue  like  a  whip.  I  asked  him  what  he  thought 
of  English  painters,  and  he  made  fun  of  them:  he 
wouldn't  hear  of  Leighton,  or  Mlllais,  or  any  of 
them,  and  at  last  I  said,  'But  what  do  you  think  of 
Whistler?    Whistler  surely  is  a  master?' 

" 'Vistlaire?'  he  repeated,  'connais  pas:  jamais 
entendu  ce  nom-la.     Que  fait-il?' 

"Of  course  I  tried  to  explain  how  great  you  were, 
Master;  described  your  marvellous  color-schemes, 
amazing  arrangements:  impressions  like  Hokusai ; 
but  Degas  only  shrugged  his  shoulders:  'Connais 
pas — Vistlaire,  connais  pas  du  tout!' 

"So  at  last  in  despair  I  told  him  that  you,  too, 


,78        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

were  a  wit,  as  he  was,  with  a  bitter  tongue,  an  ex- 
traordinary talent  of  speech,  the  wittiest  talker  in 
England, 

"  'Dommage,'  Degas  broke  in,  'he  should  paint 
with  his  tongue,  then  he  might  be  a  genius.'  " 

Every  one  laughed,  delighted  to  see  the  biter  bit; 
but  it  was  some  time  before  the  cordial  relations 
between  Whistler  and  myself  were  restored.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  he  attacked  his  friends  as  eagerly 
as  his  enemies,  and  I  avoided  him,  not  wishing  to 
quarrel  with  a  man  of  genius,  whose  work  I  could 
not  help  admiring. 

A  year  or  so  later,  however,  we  met  again  casually, 
and  I  asked  him  to  lunch,  and  he  accepted  smilingly, 
without  a  trace  of  bitterness,  en  hon  escrimeur. 

If  he  were  inclined  to  sacrifice  friendship  too 
cheaply  for  a  biting  jest  or  witty  word,  he  was  still 
more  ready  for  the  sake  of  an  intellectual  triumph 
to  make  enemies  of  the  indifferent  or  even  of  those 
willing  to  like  him. 

An  instance  occurs  to  me:  A  rich  man,  rather 
a  bore,  had  wanted  to  meet  him  for  some  time.  At 
length  he  got  himself  invited  by  Mr.  Fletcher  Moul- 
ton,  now  Lord  Moulton,  the  Judge.  When  they 
went  into  the  dining-room  the  rich  man  found  himself 
right  opposite  Whistler  who  was  on  his  host's  right; 
but  for  some  time,  to  his  annoyance,  he  couldn't  get 
a  chance  to  place  a  word.  Whistler  talked  almost 
without  ceasing.     After  some  joke  of  the  Master, 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER   79 

however,  there  came  a  pause  and  Immediately  the 
bore  seized  the  opportunity;  leaning  forward  with 
uplifted  forefinger  he  began: 

"One  word,  Mr.  Whistler,  one  word!  Today  I 
passed  your  house  and " 

Quick  as  a  flash,  Whistler  interrupted: 

"Thank  you,  thank  you !"  and  began  to  relate 
another  incident. 

The  intellectual  speed  shown  in  the  retort  was  as 
astonishing  as  the  rudeness  was  unpardonable.  But 
If  ungenerous  in  Intercourse  with  ordinary  people. 
Whistler  was  just  as  quick  to  appreciate  ability  even 
in  his  enemies.  Wherever  he  found  good  work, 
whether  in  art  or  literature,  he  praised  it  whole- 
heartedly. It  was  hardly  to  be  expected  that  this 
dainty  and  exquisite  Muse  should  admire  the  cruel 
realism  of  Degas,  or  the  bronze  made  flesh  of  Rodin ; 
but  Whistler  welcomed  nearly  every  high  artistic 
quality,  however  different  from  his  own  striving. 
He  praised  Manet  and  Puvis  de  Chavannes  en- 
thusiastically, and  seemed  utterly  devoid  of  jealousy. 
Through  his  admiration  of  Chinese  pottery  and 
bronzes  and  Japanese  prints  and  pictures  Whistler 
led  the  way  to  that  wider  understanding  of  Art 
which  Is  a  characteristic  of  our  day.  And  some  of 
the  younger  men  like  Beardsley  owed  him  the  frank- 
est and  most  generous  recognition. 

Alexander  Harrison,  the  painter,  has  given  the 
most  understanding  appreciation  of  Whistler's  real 


8o        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

nature.  As  an  example  of  pure  insight  it  stands 
alone : 

"I  have  nev  er  known  a  man  of  more  sincere  and 
genuine  impulse  even  in  ordinary  human  relations, 
and  I  am  convinced  that  no  man  ever  existed  who 
could  have  been  more  easily  controlled  on  lines  of 
response  to  a  'fair  and  square*  appreciation  of  his 
genuine  qualities.  When  off  his  guard  he  was  often 
a  pathetic  kid,  and  I  have  spotted  him  in  bashful 
moods,  although  it  would  be  hard  to  convince  the 
bourgeois  of  this.  Wit,  pathos,  gentleness,  affection, 
audacity,  acridity,  tenacity  were  brought  instantly  to 
the  sensitive  surface  like  a  flash,  by  rough  contact." 

I  think  perhaps  Whistler's  pettiest  fault  was  that 
he  had  a  poor  memory  for  kindness  done.  But,  after 
all,  ingratitude  is  the  mark  of  all  the  tribes  of 
man,  and  I  dare  say  he  was  no  more  forgetful 
of  benefits  than  the  rest  of  us. 

For  a  good  many  years  I  saw  him  from  time  to 
time  casually.  Now  he  lunched  with  me ;  now  dined : 
once  or  twice  I  dined  with  him.  But  our  relations 
were  never  intimate.  We  belonged  to  different 
generations,  and  I  couldn't  be  a  disciple  and  sit 
at  the  feet  of  any  Gamaliel. 

One  day  when  he  was  dining  with  me  he  told 
me  that  the  Glasgow  Corporation  was  trying  to 
buy  his  portrait  of  Carlyle.  I  was  exceedingly  glad 
to  hear  it,  and  said  so:  it  was  the  only  thing  for 
them  to  do.    He  went  on  to  confess  with  contemptu- 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER    8i 

ous  bitterness  that  they  were  hagghng  with  him  over 
the  price.  I  asked  him  how  much  he  wanted,  and 
he  replied  a  thousand  guineas,  I  begged  him  not 
to  take  less;  assured  him  I  could  find  some  one 
who  would  give  him  a  thousand  guineas  for  the 
picture  if  the  tradesmen  refused  it.  He  was  very 
anxious,  pathetically  anxious  I  thought,  to  know 
whether  he  could  rely  on  the  money:  he  seemed  a 
little  dispirited.  I  told  him  he  could  make  his  mind 
easy  on  the  matter :  the  money  would  be  forthcoming. 
On  this  he  brightened  up  remarkably,  and  declared 
that  the  fillip  was  all  he  needed;  he  knew  the  Scotch- 
men wanted  the  picture  and  were  only  bargaining; 
and  a  couple  of  days  later  he  came  and  told  me  that 
the  canny  Scots  had  agreed  to  pay  the  thousand, 
and  all  was  settled. 

Whistler  was  always  inclined  to  be  combative  and 
his  love  of  fighting  grew  in  maturity  with  his  skill 
in  verbal  fencing.  I  have  sometimes  thought  that 
he  was  so  willing  to  fight  because  he  had  already 
painted  all  the  best  pictures  in  him  and  was  no  longer 
pregnant  with  new  conceptions. 

My  next  talk  with  Whistler  illustrates  this.  I 
went  to  call  on  him  in  Paris  in  the  rue  du  Bac. 
The  modest  house  has  been  described  by  others, 
the  exquisite  yet  effective  simplicity  of  the  decora- 
tion, and  the  charming  garden  impressed  every  one. 
At  length  the  master  was  properly  lodged,  and  might 
be  expected  to  do  some  great  picture. 


82        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

I  found  him  In  a  state  of  dancing  excitement  over 
Trilby.  I  couldn't  understand  his  rage  with  Du 
Maurier,  even  when  he  told  me  that  Du  Maurier 
had  formerly  been  a  friend.  The  quarrel  seemed 
to  me  altogether  trivial.  I  felt  it  unworthy  of  a 
great  man  like  Whistler  to  allow  himself  to  be 
plagued  and  maddened  at  the  buzzing  of  such  a 
bluebottle.  But  I  had  to  listen  to  the  whole  story 
from  A  to  Z,  and  how  It  ended  with  the  apology  of 
the  publishers,  and  with  Du  Maurier's  changing  his 
sketch  of  Whistler  Into  some  bald-headed  gentleman 
called  Antony,  and  Whistler's  characteristic  quip : 

"I  wired  to  them  over  in  America,  'Compliments 
and  complete  approval  of  author's  new  and  obscure 
friend,  Bald  Antony.'  " 

He  had  wasted  what  seemed  to  me  an  unconscion- 
able amount  of  time  and  energy  over  this  unworthy 
attack.  Men  had  treated  him  contemptuously  for 
so  many  years,  life  had  been  so  unjust  to  him  that 
his  temper  had  got  raw;  every  touch  smarted,  and 
he  was  up  In  arms  and  eager  to  fight  to  the  death 
for  a  casual  rub. 

When  next  I  called  on  him  In  the  rue  du  Bac 
I  found  him  In  the  throes  of  another  combat;  the 
quarrel  with  Sir  William  Eden  over  his  wife's  por- 
trait. All  the  world  knows  the  details :  how  George 
Moore  introduced  the  baronet  to  Whistler  to  paint 
the  portrait  of  Lady  Eden;  and  how  Sir  William 
Eden  took  It  upon  himself  to  pay  the  price   he 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER    83 

thought  fixed,  without  consulting  the  artist,  who 
had  done,  not  a  pastel,  as  was  first  arranged,  but 
a  very  charming  portrait  In  oils  of  Lady  Eden,  a 
study  in  brown  and  gold. 

It  would  have  been  more  dignified  of  Whistler 
to  have  paid  no  attention  to  the  baronet  and  his 
attempt  to  slip  his  "valentine"  of  a  hundred  guineas 
Into  the  artist's  pocket;  but  once  again  Whistler's 
combativeness  came  into  play;  he  persisted  in  seeing 
intentional  insult  in  everything,  and  In  spite  of  all 
one  could  do,  fought  on  to  the  bitter  end:  he  couldn't 
speak  of  the  baronet  without  mentioning  his  "brown 
boots."  At  length  he  went  so  far  as  to  destroy  his 
own  work,  and  the  result  of  the  sittings  which  Lady 
Eden,  who  certainly  was  an  Innocent  person,  had 
granted  him:  painted  out  her  face,  and  went  Into 
court  after  court  over  the  matter,  only  to  be  con- 
demned at  the  end  as  in  the  beginning. 

He  begged  me,  I  remember,  to  write  on  the 
matter,  and  to  please  him  I  did  write  an  article  In 
The  Saturday  Review,  taking  his  side,  which  from 
a  high  point  of  view  was  perhaps  not  justified,  and 
was  certainly  unwise;  for  thereby  I  made  myself 
bitter  enemies  without  affirming  Whistler's  unstable 
friendship. 

A  later  meeting  with  Whistler  was  destined  to 
be  unpleasant.  I  had  again  and  again  heard  him 
speak  of  Mr.  Walter  Sickert  with  liking,  and  even 
appreciation,  as  a  capable  craftsman. 


84        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

Accordingly,  when  Mr.  SIckert  came  to  me  with 
an  article  about  lithographs,  setting  forth  that 
Whistler's  hthographs  were  made  on  paper,  and 
should  not  be  called  lithographs,  I  looked  upon  it 
as  the  trivial  correction  of  a  friend,  and  didn't  dream 
that  Whistler  would  feel  hurt,  much  less  insulted. 

Forthwith,  he  or  Mr.  Pennell  brought  an  action 
against  me  as  editor  of  The  Saturday  Review.  I 
could  scarcely  believe  that  the  matter  was  serious, 
but  I  soon  found  that  Whistler  was  prosecuting  the 
affair  with  his  usual  energy. 

One  day,  meeting  Mr.  Heinemann,  with  whom 
Whistler  happened  to  be  living  at  the  time,  I  told 
him  how  silly  the  whole  matter  was,  and  how  un- 
pleasant: adding  that  I  regretted  it  all,  and  would 
not  for  the  world  have  hurt  Whistler  in  any  way. 

Mr.  Heinemann  said  he  would  try  to  settle  the 
quarrel,  and  a  little  later  very  kindly  invited  me  to 
meet  Whistler  at  dinner.  I  went,  and  took  the 
occasion  to  tell  Whistler  just  what  I  had  told  Mr. 
Heinemann,  that  the  whole  dispute  was  trivial,  that 
I  wouldn't  willingly  have  done  anything  to  hurt  him, 
and  if  I  had  suspected  any  malice  in  the  matter 
I  should  never  have  published  the  article.  He  told 
me  I  must  get  Sickert  to  apologize.  I  replied  that 
I  couldn't  ask  Sickert  to  apologize;  he  would  be  sure 
to  refuse.  I  pointed  out  that  in  his  desire  to  hit 
Sickert  he  was  really  hitting  me,  who,  after  all,  had 
been  a  friend. 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER    85 

"It  can't  be  helped,"  he  said  perkily,  "it'll  have 
to  go  on  then:  it'll  have  to  go  on." 

I  shrugged  my  shoulders;  wilful  man  must  have 
his  way. 

The  trial  was  full  of  amusing  incidents.  A  sculp- 
tor, Mr.  Alfred  Gilbert,  showed  such  virulence  of 
personal  enmity  to  me  that  the  judge  ordered  him 
to  stand  down;  and  Whistler  had  as  his  chief  witness 
Mr.  Sidney  Colvin,  of  the  British  Museum,  who 
aforetime  had  been  his  butt,  and  was  always  coupled 
by  him  with  'Arry.  The  jury,  after  being  out  two 
hours,  brought  in  a  verdict  of  £50,  and  Whistler 
won  his  first  law  case,  this  time  against  one  who 
had  always  been  a  friend  and  admirer.  He  didn't 
damage  Sickert  in  any  way,  but,  if  his  crowing  over 
the  result  was  any  consolation  to  him,  I  am  glad 
he  had  it. 

I  must  find  room  here  for  a  gibe  or  two  of  Whis- 
tler's which  so  far  as  I  know  have  never  been  pub- 
lished, though  they  are  both  characteristic  and  witty 
without  being  malicious.  When  Mr.  Theodore 
Watts,  Swinburne's  friend  and  housemate,  took  the 
name  of  Dunton,  Whistler  wrote  him  a  post  card: 
"Theodore,  what's  Dunton?" 

One  day  in  a  second-hand  bookshop  he  came  upon 
a  copy  of  his  "Gentle  Art"  which  he  had  given  to 
someone  after  inscribing  on  the  title-page  : 

"With  the  regards  of  the  author." 

It  had  evidently  been  sold  for  some  few  pence. 


86        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

Whistler  bought  it,  wrote  in  one  word  and  sent  it 
again  to  the  ungrateful  friend.  The  inscription  now 
read; 

*'With  the  renewed  regards  of  the  author." 
I  have  set  down  these  acerbities  and  put  them 
so  far  as  I  could  in  a  fair  light,  not  because  I  have 
the  faintest  wish  to  accentuate  the  little  faults  of 
a  great  spirit,  but  simply  because  Whistler's  prickli- 
ness  illustrates  a  truth  too  generally  ignored.  If 
ever  there  was  a  talent  which  should  have  been 
immediately  appreciated  in  England  it  was  the  talent 
of  Jimmy  Whistler.  No  people  love  pure  beauty 
as  the  English  love  it.  Here  was  a  man  of  genius 
whose  chief  aim  and  striving  was  the  beautiful.  He 
had  no  feeling  for  even  greater  things,  none  for 
sublimity,  none  for  the  tragic  fate  which  often  over- 
whelms the  gifted,  none  for  the  great  revolt  which 
is  the  essence  of  all  higher  spiritual  life.  But  beauty 
he  loved  with  a  passionate  and  exclusive  devotion; 
the  English  should,  therefore,  have  welcomed  him 
with  open  arms.  Yet  instead  of  admiring  the  man 
who  was  a  genius  after  their  own  heart,  they  treated 
him  for  thirty  odd  years  with  such  indifference  and 
contempt  that  at  length  they  bred  bitterness  in  him, 
and  high  disdain  to  balance  their  foolish  injustice. 

Towards  the  end  of  his  life,  when  his  powers  to 
all  appearance  were  at  their  best,  this  great  artist 
and  man  of  genius  wasted  his  time  and  talent  in 
unworthy  and  absurd  quarrellings.     He  neglected 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER    87 

his  art  and  allowed  his  gift  to  humanity  to  be  dimin- 
ished in  order  to  gratify  his  vanity  and  temper.  He 
had  come  to  "his  own  and  his  own  received  him  not," 
and  he  preferred  to  punish  rather  than  to  forgive. 
I  have  no  quarrel  with  him  on  this  account.  The 
idea  that  the  artist  should  accept  slander  and  insult 
in  the  guise  of  criticism  with  slavish  submission  is 
worse  than  absurd.  The  wrong  only  begins  to  be 
righted  when  revolt  shows  the  aggressor  that  his 
wrongdoing  is  apt  to  recoil  on  his  own  head.  It  Is 
the  duty  of  the  artist  or  man  of  letters  to  teach 
the  critics  and  professors  that  reverence  for  their 
betters  is  the  proper  attitude.  No  one  finds  fault 
with  Dante  for  distributing  his  enemies  over  the 
deeper  circles  In  hell,  why  should  one  condemn  a 
Whistler  for  pillorying  'Arry  or  Sidney  Colvin,  the 
academic  pedant?  And  if  the  artist  has  been  so 
baited  and  Insulted  that  at  length  he  wastes  too 
much  energy  on  his  unworthy  assailants,  who  shall 
blame  him? 

Whatever  heat  Is  engendered  by  the  passage  of 
a  star  to  its  ordained  orbit  should  be  attributed  to 
the  resistance  of  the  medium  through  which  it  passes. 
It  would  be  wiser,  of  course,  and  nobler  for  the 
master  to  climb  to  Shakespeare's  level  and  learn 
never  to 

.    .    .   prefer  his  injuries  to  his  heart. 
To  bring  it  into  danger. 


88        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

But  it  is  only  the  very  greatest  who  are  able  to 
take  "the  buffets  and  rewards"  of  life  "with  equal 
thanks,"  and,  after  all,  in  this  world-old  quarrel 
between  the  genius-teacher  and  his  hearers  the  chief 
fault  is  always  with  the  hearers. 

The  British  public  would  do  well  now  to  consider 
their  ways  while  it  may  yet  be  time,  and  begin  to 
treat  their  artists  and  writers,  the  modern  seers  and 
prophets,  with  some  consideration. 

At  heart  Englishmen  are  all  Robinson  Crusoes, 
adventurers  and  colonizers.  They  are  full  of  ad- 
miration for  the  man  of  action  and  of  respect  for 
the  athletic  virtues,  and  especially  for  obstinate 
courage.  But  they  have  no  inkling  of  the  qualities 
necessary  to  an  artist,  and  they  treat  the  greatest  of 
the  sons  of  men  with  a  contemptuous  pity  that  is 
really  a  measure  of  their  own  blind  insensitiveness 
and  want  of  imagination.  They  read  of  an  explorer's 
struggling  to  reach  the  Pole  with  breathless  en- 
thusiasm and  mourn  his  death  in  tears,  thrilling  with 
emulation,  but  they  read  of  Ruskin's  brainless  and 
insulting  attack  on  Whistler  with  delighted  amuse- 
ment, and  when  the  crowd  of  academic  nonentities 
ran  together  in  the  law  courts  to  bait  the  man  of 
genius  their  sympathy  was  all  given  to  the  crowd  of 
envious  dullards. 

They  know  not  what  they  do. 

Let  us  try  for  a  moment  to  look  at  the  matter 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  artist.    Almost  the  first 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER    89 

thing  that  struck  one  In  Whistler's  attitude  was  the 
fact  that  though  he  was  of  Anglo-Saxon  race  and 
had  lived  by  preference  in  London  he  missed  no 
opportunity  of  girding  at  English  estimates  and 
English  standards  of  value.  He  was  proudly  con- 
scious that  his  artistic  ideal  was  at  variance  with 
English  conceptions  of  art,  and  the  conventional 
English  view  of  painting  as  a  sort  of  colored  photo- 
graph of  some  beautiful  scene  or  person  excited  in 
him  nothing  but  pity  and  contempt.  And  this  dis- 
agreement spread  into  all  departments  of  life.  He 
despised  the  materialism  of  the  race,  the  courage 
that  was  usually  self-interested  and  all  too  seldom 
chivalric,  and,  above  all,  the  honors  showered  on 
respectable  greedy  mediocrities.  He  illustrated 
Shakespeare's  wonderful  phrase  in  the  Timon: 

'Tis  well  with  every  land  to  be  at  odds. 

Whistler  was  at  odds  with  both  England  and 
America,  was  indeed  an  exile  and  pariah  everywhere 
in  this  world,  lonely  and  despised  as  the  great  artist 
seems  fated  to  be. 

Nevertheless  his  high  courage  and  wit  held  to  the 
end.  When  he  was  nearing  seventy  the  English 
failures  and  hypocritical  pretences  in  the  South  Afri- 
can war  excited  him  to  bitter  gibing.  After  retreat- 
ing from  Spion  Kop,the  British  Commander-in-Chief 
Sir  Redvers  Duller  published  a   despatch   so   self- 


90        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

congratulatory  that  It  might  have  followed  a  victory. 
At  the  end  he  summed  up  the  whole  affair  by  saying, 
*'.  .  .  and  so  we  retired  without  losing  a  gun 
or  a  mule  or  an  ammunition  wagon."  Whistler  loved 
to  quote  the  words,  adding,  "or  a  moment's  time." 

One  evening  In  Paris  he  was  seated  outside  the 
Cafe  de  la  Palx  when  a  Camelot  passed  by  shouting 
his  paper :  "La  Presse,  La  Presse!  Grande  Defaite 
des  Anglais!  10,000  hommes  tiies!  Voyez  La 
Pressed'  Whistler  bought  a  copy,  to  the  huge  dis- 
gust of  an  Englishman  sitting  near  him.  Whistler 
read  the  account  half  aloud  till  his  choleric  neighbor 
could  stand  It  no  longer: 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  sir,"  he  said  to  Whistler,  "but 
surely  you  must  know  that  such  a  defeat  Is  all  im- 
aginary— a  He,  sir,  that's  what  It  Is!" 

"Very  likely,"  rejoined  Whistler  In  his  silkiest 
tones.  "Very  likely;  but  then,  you  see,  It  makes  such 
very  pleasant  reading!" 

And  so  he  revenged  himself  on  the  Philistines. 

In  later  life  Whistler  concentrated  his  affections 
on  his  wife,  and  when  she  was  taken  from  him  his 
chief  interest  in  living  died.  He  was  too  keen- 
sighted  to  have  any  Illusions  about  a  life  beyond 
the  grave:  the  undiscovered  country  to  him  was 
blank  annihilation,  and  this  black  background  cast 
a  shadow  over  the  world  and  intensified  the  misery 
of  personal  loss.  A  daring  spirit,  set  to  sadness 
and  scorn  of  mediocrity,  the  mainspring  in  him  was 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER    91 

always  a  high  resolve  to  do  the  best  with  his  extraor- 
dinary endowment. 

No  hero,  no  leader  of  men  has  ever  displayed  a 
more  intense  devotion  to  the  ideal,  or  a  more  des- 
perate resolve  to  do  his  uttermost  at  all  costs. 
Whistler  may  stand  as  a  type  of  the  great  artist 
for  many  a  year  to  come.  A  man  has  no  foes  so 
obstinate  as  those  within  him,  and  more  than  other 
men  the  artist  is  plagued  with  those  infernal  adver- 
saries: he  is  filled  to  the  mouth  with  greeds  and 
vanities  and  passions.  The  ordinary  man  wants  com- 
forts and  security  in  life;  the  artist  wants  these  and 
all  the  luxuries  as  well — bronzes,  ivories,  enamels, 
paintings,  armors,  tapestries,  vellumed  books,  prints 
: — everything  curious  and  beautiful — and  he  wants 
them  as  aids  to  his  own  striving.  Where  another 
would  be  rich,  he  is  poor.  And  while  borne  in  this 
way  hellwards  toward  self-gratification  by  an  urging 
which  is  intertwined  with  what  is  noblest  in  him,  he 
must  at  all  costs  resist  the  devil,  and  more  than  other 
men  give  himself  to  the  ideal  in  order  to  bring  his 
work  as  near  perfection  as  possible. 

Take  the  conflict  at  its  simplest.  Whistler  saw 
that  the  more  personal  his  art  was,  the  better  it 
became,  and  with  the  intuitive  certainty  of  the  great 
artist  he  began  with  a  master's  economy  to  simplify 
the  symbol.  At  once  the  academicians  burst  out  at 
him:  "He  can't  draw,"  just  as  Reynolds  talked 
of  Blake.    It  was  Whistler  the  innovator.  Whistler 


92        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

at  his  best  that  was  most  hated.  It  Is  hard  when 
at  variance  with  every  one  to  persevere  in  a  desperate 
undertaking.  Even  a  Columbus  is  shaken  in  his 
resolve  by  the  storm  of  sneers  and  Insults  on  this 
side,  hatred  and  contempt  on  that.  And  at  the  same 
time  the  artist  must  possess  a  nobler  temper  than 
is  required  of  the  explorer  or  captain.  He  must 
not  only  believe  in  himself  absolutely  and  go  on 
working  in  spite  of  insult  and  hatred,  but  he  must 
work  joyously,  for  If  once  he  falls  to  anger  or  bitter- 
ness with  his  surroundings,  his  work  will  suffer. 

Let  us  try  to  see  Whistler's  character  In  the  proper 
light  in  connection  with  his  work,  and  let  us  take 
the  extremest  example  of  his  so-called  conceit.  One 
remembers  the  story  of  the  lady  who  coupled  him 
with  Velasquez,  assuring  him  that  the  only  two 
sacred  names  to  her  in  the  history  of  art  were 
Whistler  and  Velasquez. 

"True,  true,  dear  lady,"  remarked  Whistler,  "but 
why  drag  In  Velasquez?" 

Every  one  laughs  at  this  and  lifts  eyebrows  at 
the  conceit;  but  there  is  nothing  conceited  in  it. 
"PFhy  drag  in  Velasquez?"  is  merited  reproof. 
"Velasquez  is  dead;  his  work  done;  gone  beyond 
our  praise  or  blame  for  ever;  but  I,  Whistler,  am 
here  doing  the  modern  work:  why  couple  me  with 
the  dead?  why  drag  in  Velasquez?" 

Even  if  we  take  this  as  conceit.  Whistler's  power 
of  self-criticism  was  at  least  as  vigorous.    The  other 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER    93 

day  a  letter  of  his  was  sold  at  Sotheby's,  a  letter  to 
Way,  his  prniter,  about  some  lithographs  of  his  por- 
trait of  Count  Robert  de  Montesquieu:  here  is  his 
judgment  of  his  own  work: 

The  portrait  is  damnable!  I  don't  mean  the  printing, 
which  is  even  as  good  as  the  thing  to  be  j^rinted  was  bad; 
and  that  is  saying  a  lot.  No,  my  drawing  or  sketch  or 
whatever  you  choose  is  damnable,  and  no  more  like  the 
superb  original  than  if  it  had  been  done  by  my  worst  and 
most  incompetent  enemy.  I  hope  to  heaven  that  no  one  has 
seen  it.  Now  wipe  off  the  stone  at  once,  at  once  sending 
me  one  proof  on  the  commonest  of  paper  of  its  destroyed 
state,  and  also  every  trial  proof  you  may  have  taken,  that 
I  may  myself  burn  all.  There  must  be  no  record  of  this 
abomination !  It  is  neither  for  catalogue  nor  posterity, 
and  is  the  folly  of  proposing  to  produce  the  same  master- 
piece twice  over.  Why  should  one  ?  Ridiculous !  Now, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  last  little  draped  figure  is  delight- 
ful, and  beautifully  printed  of  course. 

What  do  you  think,  reader,  of  this  assured  self- 
praise  and  passionate,  complete  self-condemnation? 
And  even  now  perhaps  you  don't  understand  the 
inflexible  conscience  of  the  artist.  Whistler  needed 
money  to  live  and  work:  here  is  a  bank-note,  so  to 
speak. 

''Tear  it  up,"  he  cries,  "the  work  is  not  my  best: 
I'll  not  live  by  it,  tear  it  up,  let  no  replica  of  it  be 
seen :  I'll  go  hungry  rather  than  give  anything  less 
than  my  best." 


94        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

No  adventurer,  no  Columbus  ever  showed  such 
high  resolve,  such  noble  courage.  Let  us  come  to  a 
final  test. 

The  English  law  made  a  world-wide  benefactor  a 
bankrupt  at  fifty;  Whistler  would  not  or  could  not 
pay  Ruskin's  law  costs  and  so  his  home  was  sold  up; 
his  pictures  given  away  for  a  song:  his  household 
goods  all  dispersed  and  lost.  His  mother  was  weak 
and  needed  the  comforts  of  money.  He  took  her 
to  a  good  home  in  a  watering-place,  and  then,  paint- 
box in  hand,  sallied  forth  to  Venice  when  past  middle 
age  to  build  up  another  home,  and  incidentally  a 
new  fame.  And  the  artist's  courage  is  not  that  des- 
perate unhappy  dour  resolution  that  a  Carlyle  looked 
on  as  the  ideal :  it  is  a  smiling,  joyous,  happy  valiance. 
Whistler  knew  that  happiness  was  an  essential  of 
his  art,  and  he  kept  his  laughing  wit  undisturbed. 
The  story  of  it  is  one  of  the  great  stories  of  the 
world.  Nothing  finer,  nothing  more  heroic  has  been 
told  of  man.  His  creditors  had  put  a  man  in  pos- 
session of  his  house  in  Tite  Street,  Chelsea.  Whistler 
clothed  him  decently  and  used  him  as  a  servant.  At 
the  end  of  the  week  the  man  came  to  him  to  be 
paid. 

"I  have  nothing,"  said  Whistler,  "I  thought  the 
creditors  paid  you.    At  the  moment  I  can't  pay  you." 

"What  am  I  to  do?"  cried  the  man,  "my  family 
is  hard  up,  they  want  the  money." 

"Very   terrible,"    exclaimed  Whistler,    "terrible. 


WHISTLER:  ARTIST  AND  FIGHTER    95" 

I'm  sorry.  I'll  get  you  the  money  by  next  Saturday : 
I'll  paint  something." 

"But  that  won't  do,"  said  the  man,  "I  must  have 
some  help  now." 

"I  can  think  of  nothing,"  said  Jimmy,  resolved 
to  pawn  something  rather  than  not  help :  then  the 
quick  intelligence  rippled  into  a  smile,  "I  can  think 
of  nothing,  but  why  not  put  a  man  In  possession, 
then  you'll  be  able  to  get  along  as  I  do." 

That's  how  the  artist  has  to  face  life:  the  wit  is 
exceptional,  but  the  heroism  is  common  enough. 
Take  it  in  another  way.  The  pains  of  motherhood 
are  excruciating;  but  suppose  the  mother  were  told 
that  she  must  conceive  in  joy  and  bring  forth  not 
with  groans  but  with  smiles  and  witty  stories,  and 
at  the  same  time  use  every  endeavor  to  make  each 
child  fairer  than  the  previous  one;  what  should  we 
think  of  her  trial?  There  Is  no  courage  in  the 
world,  no  fortitude  to  be  compared  with  that  of  the 
artist. 

To  me  Whistler  Is  the  perfect  type  of  the  great 
creative  artist.  I  think  of  him  as  essentially  modest. 
Asked  by  a  foolish  Attorney-General  how  he  came 
to  put  £200  on  a  picture  he  could  paint  In  a  day, 
he  replied:  "Because  it  took  me  a  lifetime  to  win 
to  that  mastery."  The  barrister  who  often  got  more 
for  doing  nothing  found  fault  with  the  answer.  He 
and  the  silly  judge  both  agreed  that  the  picture  was 
not  worth  the  money:  this  very  picture,  condemned 


96        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

by  Ruskin  and  jeered  at  by  barrister,  judge,  and 
jury,  has  had  an  eventful  history.  It  belonged  at 
that  time  to  Mr.  Graham.  A  few  years  after,  at 
his  sale  at  Christie's  it  was  knocked  down  amid  hisses 
to  a  Mr.  Harrison  for  sixty  pounds.  A  little  later 
still,  at  the  close  of  the  London  Whistler  Memorial 
Exhibition,  It  was  bought  for  two  thousand  guineas 
by  the  National  Arts  Collection  Fund,  presented  to 
the  nation,  and  now  hangs  in  the  National  Collection 
at  the  Tate  Gallery.  Surely,  when  they  come  to 
understanding  the  English  will  begin  to  honor  the 
great  creative  artists  and  not  the  gnat  critics  and 
penguin  professors. 


OSCAR  WILDE 
FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH  BY  ELLIS  fe?  WALLER Y,  1 892 


OSCAR  WILDE 

AS  a  result  of  nearly  twenty  years'  friendship  I 
have  written  a  life  of  Oscar  Wilde.  The  pub- 
lishers of  this  book  of  "Portraits"  wish  me  to  sketch 
him  here  in  a  dozen  pages.  Replicas  in  art  are  un- 
thinkable: even  a  hen  cannot  lay  two  eggs  exactly 
alike;  but  I  can  take  some  pages  from  my  book  here 
and  there,  and  so  give  some  idea  of  the  man  and  his 
excelling  humor,  though  in  such  narrow  limits  I 
cannot  trust  myself  to  speak  of  his  deeper  self  and 
tragic  fate.  Here  is  a  snapshot,  so  to  speak,  with 
apologies  to  the  reader,  who  will  have  to  use  imagi- 
nation to  stuff  out  the  meagre  outline. 

In  the  early  eighties  I  met  Oscar  Wilde  con- 
tinually, now  at  the  theatre,  now  in  some  society 
drawing-room;  most  often,  I  think,  at  Mrs.  Jeune's 
(afterwards  Lady  St.  Helier).  His  appearance  was 
not  in  his  favor;  there  was  something  oily  and  fat 
about  him  that  repelled  me.  Of  course,  being  very 
young  I  tried  to  give  my  repugnance  a  moral  founda- 
tion; fleshly  indulgence  and  laziness,  I  said  to  myself, 
were  written  all  over  him.  The  snatches  of  his 
monologues  which  I  caught  from  time  to  time  seemed 

97 


98        CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

to  me  to  consist  chiefly  of  epigrams  almost  mechan- 
ically constructed  of  proverbs  and  familiar  sayings 
turned  upside  down.  One  of  Balzac's  characters,  it 
will  be  remembered,  practised  this  form  of  humor. 
The  desire  to  astonish  and  dazzle;  the  love  of  the 
uncommon  for  Its  own  sake,  were  so  evident  that 
I  shrugged  my  shoulders  and  avoided  him.  One 
evening,  however,  at  Mrs.  Jeune's,  I  got  to  know 
him  better.  At  the  very  door  Mrs.  Jeune  came  up 
to  me: 

"Have  you  ever  met  Mr.  Oscar  Wilde?  You 
ought  to  know  him:  he  is  so  dehghtfuUy  clever,  so 
brilliant!" 

I  went  with  her  and  was  formally  introduced  to 
him.  He  looked  like  a  Roman  Emperor  of  the 
decadence;  he  was  over  six  feet  in  height,  and  both 
broad  and  thick-set.  He  shook  hands  in  a  limp 
way  I  disliked;  his  hands  were  flabby;  greasy;  his 
skin  looked  bilious  and  dirty.  He  had  a  trick  which 
I  noticed  even  then,  which  grew  on  him  later,  of 
pulling  his  jowl  with  his  right  hand  as  he  spoke, 
and  his  jowl  was  already  fat  and  pouchy.  He  wore 
a  great  green  scarab  ring  on  one  finger.  He  was 
overdressed  rather  than  well  dressed;  his  clothes 
fitted  him  too  tightly;  he  was  too  stout.  His  ap- 
pearance filled  me  with  distaste.  I  lay  stress  on  this 
physical  repulsion  because  I  think  most  people  felt 
it,  and  because  it  is  a  tribute  to  the  fascination  of 


OSCAR  WILDE  99 

the  man  that  he  should  have  overcome  the  first  Im- 
pression so  completely  and  so  quickly.  I  don't 
remember  what  we  talked  about,  but  I  noticed  almost 
immediately  that  his  grey  eyes  were  finely  expressive ; 
in  turn  vivacious,  laughing,  sympathetic;  always 
beautiful.  The  carven  mouth,  too,  with  its  heavy, 
chiselled,  almost  colorless  lips,  had  a  certain  charm 
in  spite  of  a  black  front  tooth  which  showed  ignobly. 

We  had  a  certain  interest  in  each  other,  an  interest 
of  curiosity,  for  I  remember  that  he  led  the  way 
almost  immediately  Into  the  inner  drawing-room,  in 
order,  as  he  said,  to  talk  at  ease  in  some  seclusion. 
The  conversation  ended  by  my  asking  him  to  lunch 
next  day. 

At  this  time  he  was  a  superb  talker,  more  brilliant 
than  any  I  have  ever  heard  In  England,  but  nothing 
like  what  he  became  later  in  life.  His  talk  soon 
made  me  forget  his  repellant  physical  peculiarities; 
indeed,  I  soon  lost  sight  of  them  so  completely  that 
I  have  wondered  since  how  I  could  have  been  so 
disagreeably  affected  by  them.  There  was  an  ex- 
traordinary physical  vivacity  and  geniality  in  the 
man,  a  winning  charm  in  his  gaiety,  and  lightning 
quick  intelligence.  His  enthusiasms  too  were  infec- 
tious. Every  mental  question  Interested  him,  espe- 
cially if  it  had  anything  to  do  with  art  or  literature. 
His  whole  face  lit  up  as  he  spoke,  and  one  saw  noth- 
ing but  his  soulful  eyes,  heard  nothing  but  his  musical 


100      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

tenor  voice;  he  was  indeed  what  the  French  call  a 
charm  eur. 


In  the  World's  School.     London,   i  880-1 884. 

Before  Oscar  Wilde  left  Oxford  he  described 
himself  as  a  "Professor  of  Esthetics  and  Critic  of 
Art."  He  had  already  dipped  into  his  little  patri- 
mony to  pay  for  his  undergraduate  trip  to  Greece 
and  Italy  with  Mahaffy,  and  he  could  not  conceal 
from  himself  that  he  would  soon  have  to  live  on 
what  he  could  earn  by  his  pen  in  London — a  few 
pounds  a  week.  But  then  he  was  a  poet,  and  had 
boundless  confidence  in  his  own  ability.  To  the 
artist  nature  the  present  is  everything;  just  for  today 
he  resolved  that  he  would  live  as  he  had  always 
lived;  so  he  travelled  first  class  to  London  and 
bought  all  the  books  and  papers  that  could  amuse  or 
distract  him:  "Give  me  the  luxuries,"  he  used  to 
say,  "and  anyone  can  have  the  necessaries." 

Of  course,  in  the  background  of  his  mind  there 
were  serious  misgivings — ghosts  that  would  not  be 
laid.  Long  afterwards  he  told  me  that  his  father's 
death  and  the  smallness  of  his  patrimony  had  been 
a  heavy  blow  to  him.  He  encouraged  himself,  how- 
ever, at  the  moment  by  dwelling  on  his  brother's 
comparative  success  as  a  journalist  In  London,  and 
waved  aside  fears  and  doubts  as  unworthy. 


OSCAR  WILDE  loi 

It  Is  to  his  credit  that  at  first  he  tried  to  cut  down 
expenses  and  live  laborious  days.  He  took  a  couple 
of  furnished  rooms  in  Salisbury  Street,  off  the  Strand, 
a  very  Grub  Street  for  a  man  of  fashion,  and  began 
to  work  at  journalism  while  getting  together  a  book 
of  poems  for  publication.  His  journahsm  at  first 
was  anything  but  successful.  It  was  his  misfortune 
to  appeal  only  to  the  best  heads,  and  good  heads 
are  not  numerous  anywhere.  His  appeal,  too,  was 
still  academic  and  derivative.  His  brother  Willie 
with  his  commoner  sympathies  appeared  to  be  better 
equipped  for  this  work.  But  Oscar  had  from  the 
first  a  certain  social  success. 

As  soon  as  he  reached  London  he  stepped  boldly 
into  the  limelight,  going  to  all  "first  nights"  and 
taking  the  floor  on  all  occasions.  He  was  not  only 
an  admirable  talker,  but  he  was  invariably  smiling, 
eager,  full  of  life  and  the  joy  of  living,  and,  above 
all,  given  to  unmeasured  praise  of  whatever  and 
whoever  pleased  him.  This  gift  of  enthusiastic  ad- 
miration was  not  only  his  most  engaging  characteris- 
tic, but  also,  perhaps,  the  chief  evidence  of  his  ex- 
traordinary ability.  It  was  certainly,  too,  the  quality 
which  served  him  best  all  through  his  life.  He  went 
about  declaring  that  Mrs.  Langtry  was  more  beauti- 
ful than  the  "Venus  of  Milo,"  and  Lady  Archie 
Campbell  more  charming  than  Rosalind,  and  Mr. 
Whistler  an  incomparable  artist.  Such  enthusiasm 
in  a  young  and  brilliant  man  was  unexpected  and 


I02      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

delightful,  and  doors  were  thrown  open  to  him  in 
many  sets.  Those  who  praise  passionately  are  gen- 
erally welcome  guests,  and  if  Oscar  could  not  praise 
he  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  kept  silent;  scarcely 
a  bitter  word  ever  fell  from  those  smiling  lips.  No 
tactics  could  have  been  more  successful  in  England 
than  his  native  gift  of  radiant  good-humor  and 
enthusiasm.  He  got  to  know  not  only  all  the  actors 
and  actresses,  but  the  chief  patrons  and  frequenters 
of  the  theatre :  Lord  Lytton,  Lady  Shrewsbury, 
Gladys,  Lady  Lonsdale  (afterwards  Lady  de  Grey), 
and  Mrs.  Jeune;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  Tennyson, 
Hardy,  Meredith,  Browning,  Swinburne,  and  Mat- 
thew Arnold — all  Bohemia,  in  fact,  and  all  that 
part  of  Mayfair  which  cares  for  the  things  of  the 
intellect. 

But  though  he  went  out  a  great  deal  and  met  a 
great  many  distinguished  people,  and  won  a  certain 
popularity,  his  social  success  put  no  money  in  his 
purse.  It  even  forced  him  to  spend  money;  for  the 
constant  applause  of  his  hearers  gave  him  self-con- 
fidence. He  began  to  talk  more  and  write  less,  and 
cabs  and  gloves  and  flowers  cost  money.  He  was 
soon  compelled  to  mortgage  his  little  property  in 
Ireland. 

At  the  same  time,  he  was  still  nobly  intent  on 
bettering  his  mind,  and  in  London  he  found  far 
wiser  teachers  than  in  Oxford,  Matthew  Arnold,  and 
Morris,    and   in    especial   Whistler.      Morris    and 


OSCAR  WILDE  103 

Arnold,  though  greatly  overestimated  during  their 
lives,  had  hardly  any  message  for  the  men  of  their 
own  time.  Morris  went  for  his  ideals  to  an  imagi- 
nary past,  and  what  he  taught  and  praised  was  often 
totally  unsuited  to  modern  conditions.  Arnold  was 
an  academic  critic  and  dilettante  poet,  his  views  of 
life  those  of  the  snobbish  goody-goody  schoolmaster, 
his  influence  a  scholarly  and  cloistered  influence,  an 
evil  influence  for  Oscar  Wilde  confirming  his  book- 
ish bias.  Whistler,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a  student 
of  life,  a  master  of  ironic  persiflage,  and  a  great 
artist  to  boot:  he  had  not  only  assimilated  much 
of  the  newest  thought  of  the  time,  but  with  the 
alchemy  of  genius  had  transmuted  it  and  made  it 
his  own.    He  was,  indeed,  worth  listening  to. 

Oscar  sat  at  his  feet  and  assimilated  as  much  as  he 
could  of  the  new  aesthetic  gospel.  He  even  ventured 
to  annex  some  of  the  master's  theories  and  telling 
stories,  and  thus  came  into  conflict  with  his  teacher. 

Everyone  must  remember  one  instance  of  this  and 
Whistler's  use  of  it.  The  art  critic  of  The  Times  had 
come  to  see  an  exhibition  of  Whistler's  pictures. 
Filled  with  an  undue  sense  of  his  own  importance 
he  buttonholed  the  master  and  pointing  to  one  pic- 
ture said:  "That's  good,  first-rate,  a  lovely  bit  of 
color;  but  that,  you  know,"  he  went  on,  jerking  his 
finger  over  his  shoulder  at  another  picture;  "that's 
bad,  drawing  all  wrong     .     .     .     bad!" 

"My   dear   fellow,"   cried  Whistler,   "you  must 


104      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

never  say  that  that  painting's  good  or  that  bad, 
never!  Good  and  bad  are  not  terms  to  be  used  by 
you ;  but  say,  I  like  this,  and  I  dislike  that,  and  you'll 
be  within  your  right.  And  now  come  and  have  a 
whiskey  for  you're  sure  to  like  that." 

Carried  away  by  the  witty  fling,  Oscar  cried: 

"I  wish  I  had  said  that." 

"You  will,  Oscar,  you  will,"  came  Whistler's  light- 
ning thrust. 

Of  all  the  personal  influences  which  went  to  the 
moulding  of  Oscar  Wilde's  talent,  that  of  Whistler 
was  by  far  the  most  important;  Whistler  taught  him 
the  value  of  wit  and  the  power  a  consciousness  of 
genius  and  a  knowledge  of  men  lend  to  the  artist, 
taught  him,  too,  that  singularity  of  appearance 
counts  doubly  in  a  democracy  of  clothes.  But 
neither  his  own  talent,  nor  the  stories  and  ideas  he 
borrowed  from  Whistler  helped  him  to  earn  money: 
the  conquest  of  London  seemed  further  off  and  more 
Improbable  than  ever.  Where  a  Whistler  had 
failed  to  win,  how  could  he,  or  indeed  anyone,  be 
sure  of  success? 

A  weaker  professor  of  aesthetics  would  have  been 
discouraged  by  the  monetary  and  other  difficulties 
of  his  position,  and  would  have  lost  heart  at  the 
outset  before  the  impenetrable  blank  wall  of  Eng- 
lish philistinism  and  contempt.  But  Oscar  Wilde 
was  conscious  of  great  ability  and  was  driven  by  an 
inordinate  vanity.     Instead  of  diminishing  his  pre- 


OSCAR  WILDE  105 

tensions  In  the  face  of  opposition,  he  Increased  them. 
He  began  to  go  abroad  in  the  evening  In  knee 
breeches  and  silk  stockings,  wearing  strange  flowers 
In  his  coat — green  carnations  and  gilded  lilies — 
while  talking  about  Baudelaire,  whose  name  even 
was  unfamiliar,  as  a  world  poet,  and  proclaiming 
the  strange  creed  that  "nothing  succeeds  like  ex- 
cess." Very  soon  his  name  was  In  every  one's  mouth, 
fashionable  London  talked  of  him  and  discussed 
him  at  a  thousand  tea-tables.  For  one  invitation  he 
had  received  before,  he  now  received  a  dozen;  he 
became  a  celebrity. 

Of  course,  he  was  still  sneered  at  by  the  many 
as  a  mere  poseur;  it  still  seemed  to  be  all  Lombard 
Street  to  a  china  orange  that  he  would  be  beaten 
down  under  the  myriad  trampling  feet  of  English 
Indifference  and  contempt. 

But  If  the  artistic  movement  was  laughed  at  and 
scorned  by  the  many  as  a  craze,  a  select  few  stood 
firm,  and  soon  the  steadfast  minority  began  to  sway 
the  majority,  as  Is  usually  the  case.  Oscar  Wilde 
became  the  prophet  of  an  esoteric  cult.  But  notori- 
ety even  did  not  solve  the  monetary  question,  which 
grew  more  and  more  Insistent.  A  dozen  times  he 
waved  it  aside  and  went  into  debt  rather  than  re- 
strain himself.  Somehow  or  other  he  would  fall 
on  his  feet,  he  thought.  Men  who  console  them- 
selves in  this  way  usually  fall  on  some  one  else's  feet, 
and  so  did  Oscar  Wilde.     At  twenty-six  years  of 


io6      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

age,  and,  curiously  enough,  at  the  very  moment  of 
his  insolent-bold  challenge  of  the  world  with  fan- 
tastic dress,  he  had  to  borrow  from  his  mother  and 
a  little  later  was  fain  to  sell  his  small  patrimony  in 
order  to  meet  the  most  pressing  necessities;  but  the 
difficulty  was  only  postponed;  what  was  to  be  done? 

Even  as  a  young  man  Oscar  had  a  certain  under- 
standing of  life.  He  could  not  make  his  way  as  a 
journalist,  but  he  might  as  a  lecturer;  he  knew  In 
his  heart  that  he  could  talk,  better  than  he  could 
write  and  there  was  a  lot  of  money  in  a  successful 
lecture  tour.  But  for  the  moment  he  put  off  this 
new  adventure,  having  persuaded  himself  that  his 
book  of  poems  would  make  him  famous  and  perhaps 
rich.  He  had  used  all  his  cleverness  on  the  book; 
he  had  written  sonnets  In  it  to  Miss  Ellen  Terry  and 
other  notable  persons;  they  would  surely  talk  about 
the  book  and  buy  copies  and  get  their  friends  also 
to  buy.  His  calculation  was  not  mistaken:  the  book 
went  into  four  editions  in  as  many  weeks  and  brought 
in  some  two  or  three  hundred  pounds — tenfold  more 
than  Keats's  first  book.  There  was  a  bitter  in  the 
sweet,  however;  the  critics  would  not  have  him  at 
any  price  :  The  Times,  The  Saturday  Review,  Punch 
— the  bigwigs  declared  unanimously  that  his  poems 
were  mere  echoes  and  furnished  striking  proof  of 
their  assertions.  Oscar  Wilde,  they  all  concluded, 
was  anything  you  like;  but  not  a  poet. 

In  face  of  the  condemnation  of  the  critics  Oscar 


OSCAR  WILDE  107 

acted  at  once :  he  got  his  brother  Willie  to  announce 
in  The  JForld  that  the  unexampled  success  of  the 
poems  had  brought  Oscar  Wilde  an  offer  from  the 
famous  irr^presario,  Major  Pond,  to  lecture  in  the 
States,  and  mcontinently  he  betook  himself  to  New 
York. 

On  landing  he  boldly  challenged  Fortune  again  by 
telling  the  custom  officials  that  he  had  nothing  to 
declare  but  his  genius.  The  phrase  caught  the  pub- 
lic fancy  and  his  first  lecture  in  Chickering  Hall 
brought  together  so  distinguished  an  audience  that 
an  impresario  volunteered  his  services  and  Oscar  be- 
gan his  tour  under  the  best  auspices.  His  subjects 
were  "The  English  Renaissance"  and  "The  House 
Beautiful."  He  had  what  the  French  call  a  siicces 
de  scandale — a  success  of  notoriety  In  America,  but 
nothing  more.  People  went  to  see  his  old-world 
attire  rather  than  to  hear  him.  One  is  fain  to  con- 
fess today  that  his  lectures  make  very  poor  reading. 
There  is  not  a  new  thought  in  them;  not  even  a  mem- 
orable expression;  though  now  and  then  a  gleam 
of  humor,  an  unexpected  bird-like  flirt  of  wing  and 
quick  change  of  direction  are  diverting.  The  lec- 
tures were  a  half-success.  He  made  some  money 
by  them,  repaid  his  mother,  and  spread  his  name 
abroad.  But  the  cash  result  was  not  conclusive.  In 
a  year  or  so  we  find  him  again  in  England;  grown  a 
little  wiser. 


io8      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

It  is  greatly  to  his  credit  that  he  did  not  settle 
down  in  London.  Whistler  had  studied  in  Paris,  so 
Oscar  went  there,  too,  using  the  money  he  had  made 
in  America  to  better  his  culture.  In  a  few  months 
he  learned  a  great  deal  of  French  and  got  to  know 
most  of  the  younger  French  writers.  On  his  return 
he  talked  of  Verlaine  as  familiarly  and  admiringly 
as  he  had  formerly  talked  of  Baudelaire. 

Before  going  to  France  he  had  lectured  in  London 
to  the  Art  Students  of  the  Royal  Academy  on  art 
and  thereby  excited  Whistler's  anger.  Whistler  as- 
serted that  Oscar  had  begged  him  for  assistance  in 
composing  this  address;  he  had  imparted  some  sim- 
ple, necessary  truths  and  from  a  gentleman  had  nat- 
urally looked  for  the  usual  acknowledgment.  But 
Oscar  had  coolly  appropriated  his  ideas,  flaunted  his 
feathers  and  had  omitted  to  give  his  master  the 
credit.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Whistler's  com- 
plaint, though  over-shrill  and  passionate,  was  jus- 
tified: whoever  compares  Oscar's  lecture  on  "The 
English  Renaissance  of  Art"  with  his  lecture  to  the 
Art  Students  will  have  to  recognize  a  change  of 
front.  Such  phrases  as  "artists  are  not  to  copy 
beauty  but  to  create  it  ...  a  picture  is  a  purely 
decorative  thing,"  proclaim  their  author.  Oscar 
himself,  when  questioned,  admitted  that  there  was 
some  truth  in  Whistler's  contention.  The  newspaper 
dispute  between  the  two  was  brought  to  a  head  in 
1885,  when  Whistler  gave  his  famous  Ten  o'clock 


OSCAR  WILDE  109 

lecture  on  Art:  Whistler's  lecture  was  infinitely  bet- 
ter than  any  of  Oscar  Wilde's.  Twenty  odd  years 
older  than  Wilde,  Whistler  was  a  master  of  all  his 
resources :  he  was  not  only  witty,  but  he  had  new 
views  on  art  and  original  ideas.  As  a  great  artist  he 
knew  that  "there  never  was  an  artistic  period. 
There  never  was  an  Art-loving  nation." 

Again  and  again,  too,  he  reached  pure  beauty  of 
feeling  and  expression.  I  thought  the  lecture  mas- 
terly, the  best  ever  heard  in  London,  and  I  said  so 
loudly  enough.  To  my  astonishment  Oscar  would 
not  admit  the  superlative  quality  of  Whistler's  talk: 
he  thought  the  message  paradoxical  and  the  ridi- 
cule of  the  professors  too  bitter.  "Whistler's  like 
a  wasp,"  he  cried,  "and  carries  about  with  him  a 
poisoned  sting."  Oscar's  kindly  sweet  nature  re- 
volted against  the  bitter  aggressiveness  of  Whistler's 
attitude.  Besides,  in  essence,  Whistler's  lecture  was 
an  attack  on  the  academic  theory  taught  in  the  uni- 
versities, and  defended  naturally  by  a  young  scholar 
like  Oscar  Wilde.  Whistler's  view  that  the  artist 
was  sporadic,  a  happy  chance,  a  "sport,"  in  fact, 
even  in  1885,  was  a  new  view,  and  Oscar  was  not  on 
this  level;  he  reviewed  the  master  in  the  Pall  Mall 
Gazette,  a  review  remarkable  for  one  of  the  earliest 
gleams  of  that  genial  humor  which  later  became  his 
most  characteristic  gift:  "Whistler,"  he  said,  "is 
Indeed  one  of  the  very  greatest  masters  of  painting  in 


no      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

my  opinion.  And  I  may  add  that  in  this  opinion  Mr. 
Whistler  himself  entirely  concurs." 

Whistler  retorted  in  The  JVorld  and  Oscar  re- 
plied, but  Whistler  had  altogether  the  best  of  the 
argument. 

A  little  later  we  had  Whistler's  famous  and  bit- 
ter summing  up.  .  .  .  "What  has  Oscar  in  com- 
mon with  Art?  except  that  he  dines  at  our  tables 
and  picks  from  our  platters  the  plums  for  the  pud- 
ding he  peddles  in  the  provinces.  .  .  .  Oscar — the 
amiable,  irresponsible,  esurient  Oscar — with  no 
more  sense  of  a  picture  than  of  the  fit  of  a  coat,  has 
the  courage  of  the  opinions   ...    of  others!" 

Oscar  Wilde  learned  almost  all  he  knew  of  art 
and  of  controversy  from  Whistler,  but  he  was  never 
more  than  a  pupil  in  either  field;  for  controversy  es- 
pecially, he  was  poorly  equipped:  he  had  neither  the 
courage,  nor  the  bitterness,  nor  the  joy  in  conflict 
of  his  great  exemplar.  It  was  only  his  geniality  and 
high  intelligence  which  saved  him  from  becoming 
as  manifest  a  butt  as  Mr.  Sidney  Colvin  or  poor 
'Arry  Quilter. 

Ten  years  later  he  had  become  as  witty  as  his  mas- 
ter, and  a  thousand  times  more  humorous,  but  even 
then  he  was  a  wretched  fighter,  too  kindly  ever  to  be 
a  good  disputant. 

Very  soon  after  meeting  Oscar  Wilde  for  the 
first  time  I  confessed  to  myself  that  I  liked  himj 


OSCAR  WILDE  in 

his  talk  was  intensely  quickening.  He  had  something 
unexpected  to  say  on  almost  every  subject.  His 
mind  was  agile  and  powerful,  and  he  took  dehght 
in  using  it.  He  was  well  read,  too,  in  several  lan- 
guages, especially  in  French,  and  his  excellent  mem- 
ory stood  him  in  good  stead.  Even  when  he  merely 
repeated  what  the  great  ones  had  said  perfectly,  he 
added  a  new  coloring.  And  already  his  character- 
istic humor  was  beginning  to  illumine  every  topic 
with  lambent  flashes. 

The  first  time  we  lunched  together  he  told  me  that 
he  had  been  asked  by  Harper's  to  write  a  book  of 
one  hundred  thousand  words  and  offered  a  large 
sum  for  it — I  think  some  five  thousand  dollars — 
in  advance.  He  wrote  to  them  gravely  that  he  did 
not  know  one  hundred  thousand  words  in  English, 
so  could  not  undertake  the  work,  and  he  laughed 
merrily  like  a  child  at  the  cheeky  reproof. 

"I  have  sent  their  letters  and  my  reply  to  the 
Press,"  he  added,  and  laughed  again,  probing  me 
with  inquisitive  eyes:  how  far  did  I  understand  that 
self-advertisement  was  a  necessity,  notoriety  a  short- 
cut to  fame? 

About  this  time  an  impromptu  of  his  moved  the 
town  to  laughter.  At  some  dinner-party  it  appeared 
the  ladies  sat  a  little  too  long;  Oscar  wanted  to 
smoke.  Suddenly  the  hostess  drew  his  attention  to 
a  candle  on  his  left: 


112      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

"Please  put  It  out,  Mr.  Wilde,"  she  said,  "it's 
smoking." 

Oscar  turned  to  do  as  he  was  told  with  the  re- 
mark:   "Happy  candle !" 

The  delightful  Impertinence  had  an  extraordinary 
success.    .    .    . 

Early  in  our  friendship  I  was  forced  to  see  that 
his  love  of  the  uncommon,  his  paradoxes  and  epi- 
grams were  natural  to  him,  sprang  immediately 
from  his  nature  and  temperament.  Perhaps  it  would 
be  well  to  define  once  for  all  his  attitude  towards 
life  with  more  scope  and  particularity  than  I  have 
hitherto  done.  It  is  often  supposed  that  he  had 
no  clear  and  coherent  view  of  life,  no  belief,  no 
faith  to  guide  his  vagrant  footsteps;  but  such  an 
opinion  does  him  an  Injustice.  He  had  his  own  phil- 
osophy, and  held  to  it  for  long  years  with  aston- 
ishing tenacity.  His  attitude  towards  life  can  best  be 
seen  if  he  be  held  up  against  Goethe.  He  took  the 
artistic  view  of  life  which  Goethe  had  first  stated, 
and,  indeed,  in  youth  had  overstated  with  an  aston- 
ishing persuasiveness:  "the  beautiful  is  more  than 
the  good,"  said  Goethe;  "for  it  includes  the  good." 

It  seemed  to  Oscar,  as  it  had  seemed  to  young 
Goethe,  that  "the  extraordinary  alone  survives";  the 
extraordinary  whether  good  or  bad;  he  therefore 
sought  after  the  extraordinary,  and  naturally  enough 
often  fell  into  extravagance.  But  how  stimulating 
it  was  in  London,  where  sordid  platitudes  drip  and 


OSCAR  WILDE  113 

drizzle  all  day  long,  to  hear  some  one  talking  bril- 
liant paradoxes.  Oscar's  appeal  to  the  artistic  intel- 
ligence was  as  quickening  as  sunshine. 

Goethe  did  not  linger  long  in  the  half-way  house 
of  unbelief;  the  murderer,  he  saw,  may  win  notoriety 
as  easily  as  the  martyr,  but  the  memory  of  him  will 
not  be  cherished.  ^'The  fashion  of  this  world  pass- 
eth  away,"  said  the  great  German,  "I  would  fain  oc- 
cupy myself  with  that  which  endures." 

Midway  on  life's  road  Goethe  accepted  Kant's 
moral  imperative  and  restated  his  creed:  "A  man 
must  resolve  to  live,"  he  said,  "not  only  for  the  Good 
and  Beautiful,  but  for  the  Common  Weal." 

Oscar  did  not  push  his  thought  into  such  transcen- 
dental regions. 

It  was  a  pity,  I  often  felt,  that  he  had  not  studied 
German  as  thoroughly  as  French;  Goethe  might 
have  done  more  for  him  than  Verlaine  or  Balzac, 
for  In  spite  of  some  stodgy  German  faults  Goethe  is 
the  best  guide  through  the  mysteries  of  life  that 
the  m.odern  world  has  yet  produced.  Oscar  Wilde 
stopped  where  the  religion  of  Goethe  began;  he 
was  as  obstinate  a  pagan  and  Individualist  as 
Goethe  had  been  in  youth;  he  lived  for  the  beautiful 
and  extraordinary,  but  not  for  the  Good,  and  still 
less  for  the  Whole;  he  acknowledged  no  moral  ob- 
ligation; /;/  commune  bonis  was  an  ideal  which  never 
said  anything  to  him;  he  cared  nothing  for  the  com- 
mon good;  he  held  himself  above  the  mass  of  the 


114      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

people  with  an  Englishman's  extravagant  insularity 
and  aggressive  pride.  Politics,  religion — everything 
interested  him  simply  as  a  subject  of  art;  life  itself 
was  merely  material  for  art.  In  fine  he  had  taken 
Whistler's  position,  the  position  most  natural  to  an 
artist. 

The  view  was  astounding  in  England,  and  new 
everywhere  in  its  onesidedness.  Its  passionate  exag- 
geration, however,  was  quickening,  and  there  is,  of 
course,  something  to  be  said  for  it.  The  artistic  view 
of  life  is  often  higher  than  the  ordinary  religious 
view;  at  least  it  does  not  deal  in  condemnations  and 
exclusions;  it  is  more  reasonable,  more  catholic,  more 
finely  perceptive. 

"The  artist's  view  of  life  is  the  only  possible  one,'* 
Oscar  used  to  say,  "and  should  be  applied  to  every- 
thing, most  of  all  to  religion  and  morality.  Cava- 
liers and  Puritans  are  interesting  for  their  costumes 
and  not  for  their  convictions." 

"There  is  no  such  thing  as  morality;  for  there  Is 
no  general  rule  of  spiritual  health;  it  is  all  personal, 
individual.  ...  I  only  demand  that  freedom 
which  I  willingly  concede  to  others.  No  one  con- 
demns another  for  preferring  green  to  gold.  Why 
should  any  taste  be  condemned?  Liking  and  dis- 
liking are  not  under  our  control.  I  want  to  choose 
the  nourishment  which  suits  my  body  and  my  soul." 

I  can  almost  hear  him  say  the  words  with  his 
charming   humorous   smile   and   exquisite   flash   of 


OSCAR  WILDE  115 

deprecation,  as  if  he  were  half  inclined  to  make  fun 
of  his  own  creed. 

It  was  not  his  views  on  art,  however,  which  rec- 
ommended him  to  the  aristocratic  set  in  London;  but 
his  contempt  for  social  reform,  or  rather  his  utter 
indifference  to  It,  and  his  English  love  of  inequality. 
He  never  took  sufficient  interest  in  politics  to  state 
his  position  clearly  or  strongly,  but  his  prejudices 
were  the  prejudices  of  the  English  governing  class 
and  were  all  in  favor  of  Individual  freedom,  or 
anarchy  under  the  protection  of  the  policeman. 

"The  poor  are  poor  creatures,"  he  used  to  say, 
"and  must  always  be  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of 
water.  They  are  really  the  dunghill  out  of  which 
men  of  genius  and  artists  grow  like  flowers.  Their 
function  is  to  give  birth  to  genius  and  nourish  It. 
They  have  no  other  raison  d'etre.  Were  men  as  in- 
telligent as  bees,  all  gifted  individuals  would  be  sup- 
ported by  the  community,  as  the  bees  support  their 
queen.  We  should  be  the  first  charge  on  the  State, 
just  as  Socrates  declared  that  he  ought  to  be  kept  In 
the  Prytanoeum  at  the  public  expense. 

"Don't  talk  to  me,  Frank,  about  the  hardships 
of  the  poor.  The  hardships  of  the  poor  are  neces- 
sities, but  talk  to  me  of  the  hardships  of  men  of 
genius,  and  I  could  weep  tears  of  blood.  I  was 
never  so  affected  by  any  book  In  my  life  as  I  was  by 
the  sordid  misery  of  Balzac's  poet,  Eugene  de  Ru- 
bempre." 


ii6      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

Naturally  this  creed  of  an  exaggerated  Individu- 
alism appealed  peculiarly  to  the  best  set  in  London. 
It  was  eminently  aristocratic. 

1898 :  After  the  Downfall 

The  more  I  thought  the  matter  over,  the  more 
clearly  I  saw  that  the  only  chance  of  salvation  for 
Oscar  was  to  get  him  to  work,  to  give  him  some 
purpose  In  life,  and  the  reader  should  remember 
here  that  at  this  time  I  had  not  seen  De  Profundis, 
and  did  not  know  that  while  In  prison  Oscar  had 
himself  recognized  this  necessity.  After  all,  I  said 
to  myself,  nothing  is  lost  if  he  will  only  begin  to 
write.  A  man  should  be  able  to  whistle  happiness 
and  hope  down  the  wind  and  take  despair  to  his  bed 
and  heart,  and  win  courage  from  his  harsh  com- 
panion. Happiness  is  no  good  to  the  artist:  happi- 
ness never  creates  anything  but  memories.  .  .  . 
If  Oscar  would  work  and  not  brood  over  the  dead 
past;  but  let  it  bury  itself,  he  might  yet  come  to  soul- 
health  and  achievement.  He  could  win  back  every- 
thing; his  own  respect,  and  the  respect  of  his  fellows, 
if  indeed  that  were  worth  winning.  After  all,  an 
artist  must  have  at  least  the  self-abnegation  of  the 
hero,  and  heroic  resolution  to  strive  and  strive,  or 
he  will  never  bring  It  far  even  In  his  art.  If  I  could 
only  get  Oscar  to  work,  It  seemed  to  me  everything 
might  yet  come  right.     I  spent  a  week  with  him, 


OSCAR  WILDE  117 

lunching  and  dining  and  putting  all  this  before  him 
in  every  way. 

I  noticed  that  he  enjoyed  the  good  eating  and 
the  good  drinking  as  intensely  as  ever.  He  was  even 
drinking  too  much  I  thought,  and  was  beginning  to 
get  stout  and  flabby  again,  but  the  good  living  was 
a  necessity  to  him,  and  it  certainly  did  not  prevent 
him  from  talking  charmingly.  He  was  getting  very 
deaf,  and  on  that  account  fell  into  unusual  drifts 
of  silence,  but  the  pauses  seemed  to  set  off  the  bril- 
liance of  his  talk:  his  monologues  were  more  inter- 
esting than  ever,  his  humor  richer  and  more  perva- 
sive. For  hours  together  he  would  keep  his  hear- 
ers smiling  delightedly,  interested  in  all  he  said, 
exquisitely  amused  by  the  happy  verbal  radiance 
playing  over  his  rhythmic  speech.  He  would  fre- 
quently begin  with  some  little  story,  or  apologue,  and 
then  toss  witty  nothings  about  like  a  conjuror  play- 
ing with  colored  balls,  always  ready  to  seize  on  the 
first  remark  and  illumine  It  with  a  novel  significance, 
or  make  it  the  reason  for  relating  some  new  and  In- 
teresting experience.  Other  men  may  have  talked  as 
well,  but  surely  no  one  has  ever  had  such  wealth  of 
verbal  humor.  Dozens  of  the  winged  words  of 
today  were  of  his  coining  on  the  spur  of  the  mo- 
ment: "Thick  as  thieves  in  Vallombrosa";  "The 
woman  who  hesitates  is  won";  "Familiarity  breeds 
consent";  unexpected  flirts  of  gay  insight. 

I  perpetually  praised  these  performances  In  order 


ii8      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

to  induce  him  to  write :  but  as  soon  as  I  brought  up 
the  subject  he  would  shake  his  head  gloomily: 

*'0h,  Frank,  I  cannot,  you  know  my  rooms;  how 
could  I  write  there?  A  horrid  bedroom  like  a  closet, 
and  a  little  sitting-room  without  air  or  outlook. 
Books  everywhere;  and  no  place  to  write;  to  tell 
the  truth,  I  cannot  even  read  in  it.  No  artist  could 
write  In  such  sordid  misery." 

Again  and  again  he  came  back  to  this.  He  harped 
upon  his  poverty,  so  that  I  could  not  but  see  pur- 
pose in  it.  He  was  already  cunning  in  the  art  of  get- 
ting money  without  asking  for  it.  My  heart  ached 
for  him;  one  goes  down  hill  with  such  fatal  speed 
and  ease,  and  the  mire  at  the  foot  is  so  loathsome. 

"You  ought  to  work,  Oscar.  After  all,  why  should 
anyone  help  you,  if  you  will  not  help  yourself?  If 
I  cannot  assist  you  to  save  yourself,  I  am  only  doing 
you  harm." 

"A  base  sophism,  Frank,  mere  hypocrisy,  as  you 
know:  the  fatted  calf  Is  better  than  husks  for  any 
man." 

*'You  could  easily  win  thousands  and  live  like  a 
prince  again.    Why  not  make  the  effort?" 

"It  is  harder  than  you  think,  Frank.  If  I  had 
pleasant  sunny  rooms  I'd  try.  .  .  .  It's  harder 
than  you  think." 

"Nonsense,  It's  easy  for  you.  Your  punishment 
has  made  your  name  known  in  every  country  in  the 
world.    A  book  of  yours  would  sell  like  wildfire;  a 


OSCAR  WILDE  119 

play  of  yours  would  draw  in  any  capital.  You 
might  live  here  like  a  prince.  Shakespeare  lost  love 
and  friendship,  hope  and  health  to  boot — everything, 
and  yet  forced  himself  to  write  The  Tempest.  Why 
can't  you?" 

"I'll  try,  Frank,  I'll  try." 

I  may  just  mention  here  that  any  praise  of  what 
others  had  done,  moved  Oscar  to  emulation.  He  al- 
ways compared  himself  to  the  greatest.  In  one  of 
my  articles  on  Shakespeare  in  The  Saturday  Review, 
In  1896,  I  declared  that  no  one  had  ever  given  com- 
pleter record  of  himself  than  Shakespeare:  "We 
know  him  better  than  we  know  any  of  our  con- 
temporaries," I  wrote,  "and  he  is  better  worth  know- 
ing." When  this  appeared  Oscar  wrote  to  me  prais- 
ing the  article;  but  condemning  the  phrase. 

"Frank,  Frank,  you  have  forgotten  me,"  were 
his  words,  "surely  I  am  better  worth  knowing  than 
Shakespeare." 

I  did  not  agree  with  him,  but  it  didn't  matter. 
I  had  to  go  back  to  England,  but  I  crossed  to 
Paris  early  in  the  summer,  and  found  he  had  written 
nothing. 

I  often  talked  with  him  about  it;  but  now  he 
changed  his  ground  a  little. 

"I  can't  write,  Frank.  When  I  take  up  my  pen 
all  the  past  comes  back:  I  cannot  bear  my  thoughts 
.  .  .  regret  and  remorse,  like  twin  dogs,  wait  to 
seize  me  at  any  idle  moment.     I  must  go  out  and 


120      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

watch  life;  amuse  and  interest  myself,  or  I  should 
go  mad.  .  .  .  You  don't  know  how  sore  it  is  about 
my  heart  as  soon  as  I  am  alone.  I  am  face  to  face 
with  my  own  soul:  the  Oscar  of  five  years  ago,  with 
his  beautiful  secure  life  and  his  glorious  easy  tri- 
umphs, comes  up  before  me,  and  I  cannot  stand  the 
contrast.  .  .  .  My  eyes  burn  with  tears.  If  you 
care  for  me  you  will  not  ask  me  to  write." 

"You  promised  to  try,"  I  said,  somewhat  harshly, 
"and  I  want  you  to  try.  You  haven't  suffered  more 
than  Dante  suffered  in  exile  and  poverty;  a  man  as 
proud  as  Lucifer  forced  to  be  a  parasite;  yet  you 
know  if  he  had  suffered  ten  times  as  much  he  would 
have  written  it  all  down.  Tears,  indeed  I  the  fire  in 
his  eyes  would  have  dried  the  tears." 

"True  enough,  Frank,  but  don't  you  see  that 
Dante  was  all  of  one  piece?  I  am  at  war  with  my- 
self. I  was  born  to  sing  the  joy  and  pride  of  life,  the 
pleasure  of  living,  the  delight  in  everything  beautiful 
in  this  most  beautiful  world,  and  they  took  me  and 
tortured  me  till  I  learned  sorrow  and  pity.  Now  I 
cannot  sing  the  joy,  Frank,  because  I  know  the  suf- 
fering and  I  was  never  made  to  sing  of  suffering. 
I  hate  it  and  I  want  to  sing  the  love-songs  of 
joy  and  delight.  It  is  joy  alone  which  appeals  to 
my  soul.  The  joy  of  life  and  beauty  and  love — I 
could  sing  the  song  of  Apollo  the  Sun-God,  and  they 
try  to  force  me  to  sing  the  lament  of  the  tortured 
Marsyas.    .   ^,^   ." 


OSCAR  WILDE  121 

This  to  me  was  his  true  and  final  confession.  His 
second  fall  after  leaving  prison  had  put  him  "at  war 
with  himself."  That  is,  I  thinlc,  the  heart  of  truth 
about  him;  the  song  of  sorrow,  of  pity  and  renun- 
ciation was  not  his  song,  and  the  experience  of  suf- 
fering prevented  the  great  pagan  from  singing  the 
delight  of  life  and  his  joy  in  beauty.  It  never  seemed 
to  occur  to  him  that  he  should  stand  with  one  foot 
on  self-indulgence  and  with  the  other  on  renuncia- 
tion, and  reach  a  faith  which  should  include  both  in  a 
completer  acceptance  of  life. 

In  spite  of  his  sunny  nature  he  had  a  certain 
amount  of  jealousy  and  envy  in  him  which  was  al- 
ways brought  to  light  by  the  popular  success  of  those 
whom  he  had  known  and  measured.  I  remember  his 
telling  me  once  that  he  wrote  his  first  play  because  he 
was  annoyed  at  the  way  Pinero  was  being  praised. 
"Pinero,  who  can't  write  at  all:  he  can  make  plots 
and  scenes  and  nothing  else.  His  characters  are 
made  of  dough:  and  never  was  there  such  a  worth- 
less style,  or  rather  such  a  complete  absence  of  style: 
he  writes  like  a  grocer's  assistant." 

I  noticed  now  that  this  trait  of  jealousy  was 
stronger  in  him  than  ever.  One  day  I  threw  him  an 
English  illustrated  paper  which  I  had  bought  on  my 
way  to  lunch.  It  contained  a  picture  of  Lord  Cur- 
zon  as  Viceroy  of  India.  He  was  photographed  in 
a  carriage  with  his  wife  by  his  side:  the  State  car- 
riage drawn  by  four  horses,  with  outriders,  and  es- 


122      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

corted  by  cavalry  and  cheering  crowds — all  the  para- 
phernalia and  pomp  of  imperial  power. 

"Do  you  see  that,  Frank?"  Oscar  cried;  "fancy 
George  Curzon  being  treated  like  that.  I  knew  him 
well ;  a  more  perfect  example  of  plodding  mediocrity 
was  never  seen  in  the  world.  He  had  never  a 
thought  or  phrase  above  the  common   ..." 

"Now  George  Curzon  plays  king  in  India :  Wynd- 
ham  is  a  Secretary  of  State,  and  I'm  hiding  in  shame 
and  poverty  here  In  Paris,  an  exile  and  outcast.  Do 
you  wonder  that  I  cannot  write,  Frank?  The  dread- 
ful injustice  of  life  maddens  me.  After  all,  what 
have  they  done  in  comparison  with  what  I  have 
done? 

"Close  the  eyes  of  all  of  us  now  and  fifty  years 
hence,  or  a  hundred  years  hence,  no  one  will  know 
anything  about  the  Curzons,  or  the  Wyndhams: 
whether  they  lived  or  died  will  be  a  matter  of  indif- 
ference to  every  one ;  but  my  comedies  and  my  stories 
and  The  Ballad  of  Reading  Gaol  will  be  known  and 
read  by  millions,  and  even  my  unhappy  fate  will  call 
forth  world-wide  sympathy." 

"That's  your  real  reward,  Oscar,  an  exceeding 
great  reward;  that's  what  you  have  labored  for, 
fame  and  sympathy  when  you  are  dead,  a  longer 
breath  of  life  than  other  men  can  hope  to  enjoy,  and 
that  is  why  you  should  write  now.  Go  on,  do  more, 
and  do  it  better." 


OSCAR  WILDE  123 

"Oh,  Frank,  It's  impossible,  impossible  for  me 
to  work  under  these  disgraceful  conditions." 

"But  you  can  have  better  conditions  now  and  more 
money  as  you  want  it  if  you'll  begin  to  work." 

He  shook  his  head  despairingly.  Again  and  again 
I  tried,  but  again  and  again  failed  to  move  him  to 
any  effort.     At  last  one  day  I  said  to  him: 

"The  only  thing  that  will  make  you  write,  Oscar, 
is  absolute,  blank  poverty.  That's  the  sharpest  spur 
after  all — necessity." 

"You  don't  know  me,  Frank,"  he  replied  tartly. 
"I  would  kill  myself.  I  can  endure  to  the  end;  but 
to  be  absolutely  destitute  would  show  me  that  suicide 
is  the  open  door." 

Suddenly  his  depressed  manner  changed  and  his 
whole  face  lighted  up : 

"Isn't  it  comic,  Frank,  the  way  the  English  talk 
of  the  'open  door'  while  their  doors  are  always 
locked  and  barred  and  bolted,  even  their  church 
doors?  Yet  it  is  not  hypocrisy  in  them;  they  simply 
cannot  see  themselves  as  they  are ;  they  have  no  im- 
agination." 

There  was  a  long  pause,  and  then  he  went  on 
gravely : 

"Suicide,  Frank,  is  always  the  temptation  of  the 
unfortunate,  a  great  temptation." 

"Suicide  is  the  natural  end  of  the  world-weary," 
I  replied,  "but  you  enjoy  life  intensely.  For  you 
to  talk  of  suicide  is  ridiculous." 


,124      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

"Do  you  know  that  my  wife  is  dead?" 

"I  had  heard  it,"  I  replied. 

"My  way  back  to  hope  and  a  new  life  ends  in  her 
grave,"  he  went  on.  "Everything  that  happens  to 
me  is  symbolic  and  irrevocable." 

He  spoke,  I  thought,  with  a  certain  grave  convic- 
tion. 

"The  great  tragedies  of  the  world  are  all  final 
and  complete;  Socrates  would  not  escape  death, 
though  Crito  opened  the  prison  door  for  him.  I 
could  not  avoid  prison,  though  you  showed  me  the 
way  to  safety.  Some  of  us  are  fated  to  suffer,  don't 
you  think?  as  an  example  to  humanity — 'an  echo  and 
a  light  unto  eternity.'  " 

"I  think  it  would  be  finer,  instead  of  taking  the 
punishment  lying  down,  to  trample  it  beneath  your 
feet,  and  make  it  a  rung  of  the  ladder." 

"Oh,  Frank,  you  would  turn  all  the  tragedies  into 
triumphs,  that  is  the  fighter  in  you." 

"Nonsense,"  I  cried,  "you  love  life  as  much  as 
ever  you  did;  more  than  anyone  I  have  ever  seen." 

"It  is  true,"  he  cried,  his  face  lighting  up  again, 
"more  than  anyone.  Life  delights  me.  The  people 
passing  on  the  boulevards,  the  play  of  the  sunshine 
in  the  trees ;  the  vibrating  noise,  the  quick  movement 
of  the  cabs,  the  costumes  of  the  cockers  and  serpents- 
de-ville,  kings  and  beggars,  princesses  and  prosti- 
tutes all  please  me  to  the  soul,  charm  me,  and  if  you 


OSCAR  WILDE  125 

will  only  let  me  talk  Instead  of  bothering  me  to  write 
I  shall  be  quite  happy.  Why  should  I  write  any 
more?   I  have  done  enough  for  fame.    .    .    . 

"I  will  tell  you  a  story,  Frank,"  he  broke  off,  and 
he  told  me  a  slight  thing  about  Judas.  The  little 
tale  was  told  delightfully,  with  eloquent  Inflections  of 
voice  and  still  more  eloquent  pauses. 

"The  end  of  all  this  is,"  I  said,  before  going  back 
to  London,  "the  end  of  all  this  is,  that  you  will  not 
write?" 

"No,  no,  Frank,"  he  said,  "that  I  cannot  write  un- 
der these  conditions.  If  I  had  money  enough;  if  I 
could  shake  off  Paris  and  forget  those  awful  rooms 
of  mine  and  get  to  the  Riviera  for  the  winter  and  live 
In  some  seaside  village  of  the  Latins  or  Etrurians 
with  the  wine-colored  sea  at  my  feet,  and  the  blue 
sky  above,  and  the  scent  of  rosemary  and  myrtle  at 
my  nostrils,  and  God's  sunhght  about  me  and  no  care 
for  money,  then  I  would  write  as  naturally  as  a  bird 
sings,  because  one  is  happy  and  cannot  help  It.  ..." 

But  when  the  occasion  was  given  him,  and  he 
spent  a  whole  winter  on  the  Riviera,  he  composed 
nothing  more  than  a  couple  of  verses  of  a  ballad  on 
A  Fisher  Boy,  verses  which  were  never  even  written 
down. 

The  will  to  live  had  almost  left  him:  so  long  as 
he  could  live  pleasantly  and  without  effort  he  was 


126      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

content;  but  as  soon  as  Ill-health  came  or  pain,  or 
even  discomfort,  he  grew  Impatient  for  deliverance. 

One  day  when  out  driving  In  the  last  months  Ross 
remonstrated  with  him  for  stopping  too  frequently 
to  drink: 

"You  know  you  shouldn't,  Oscar;  the  doctors  said 
you  shouldn't;  It  is  poison  to  you." 

For  one  moment  the  sad  eyes  held  him : 

"Why  not,  Bobbie?  What  have  I  to  live  for?" 
And  his  best  friend  could  only  bow  his  head. 

But  to  the  last  he  kept  his  joyous  humor  and 
charming  gaiety.  His  disease  brought  with  it  a  cer- 
tain irritation  of  the  skin,  annoying  rather  than 
painful.  Meeting  this  same  friend  after  some  weeks 
of  separation  he  wanted  to  apologize  for  scratch- 
ing himself: 

"Really,"  he  exclaimed,  "Pm  more  like  a  great 
ape  than  ever;  but  I  hope  you'll  give  me  a  lunch, 
Bobbie,  and  not  a  nut." 

At  the  very  last,  he  asked  for  champagne  and 
when  It  was  brought  declared  that  he  was  "dying  be- 
yond his  means" — his  happy  humor  lighting  up  even 
his  death-bed. 


JOHN  DAVIDSON 
FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH  BY  J.  RUSSELL  &>  SONS 


JOHN    DAVIDSON:    AD    MEMORIAM 

IT  was  in  1890  that  I  first  met  John  Davidson :  he 
had  sent  The  Ballad  of  the  Nun  to  me  for  piibU- 
cation  in  The  Fortnightly  Review.  I  read  the  poem, 
as  indeed  I  read  every  contribution  in  those  early 
days,  hoping  it  was  a  masterpiece,  and  this  time  I 
was  not  disappointed.  I  can  still  recall  the  thrill 
of  these  verses: 

The  adventurous  sun  took  heaven  by  storm; 

Clouds  scattered  largesses  of  rain; 
The  sounding  cities,  rich  and  warm, 

Smouldered  and  glittered  in  the  plain. 

Sometimes  it  was  a  wandering  wind. 
Sometimes  the  fragrance  of  the  pine, 

Sometimes  the  thought  how  others  sinned. 
That  turned  her  sweet  blood  into  wine. 

Sometimes  she  heard  a  serenade 

Complaining  sweetly  far  away: 
She  said,  "A  young  man  woos  a  maid"; 

And  dreamt  of  love  till  break  of  day. 


127 


128      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

For  still  night's  starry  scroll  unfurled. 
And  still  the  day  came  like  a  flood: 

It  was  the  greatness  of  the  world 

That  made  her  long  to  use  her  blood. 


Naturally  I  was  eager  to  meet  such  a  singer:  I 
wrote  to  him,  telling  him  of  the  joy  his  ballad  had 
given  me,  and  hoped  that  he  would  call  when  he  had 
nothing  better  to  do.  A  day  or  two  later  he  came, 
and  I  took  to  him  at  first  sight.  He  was  a  little 
below  middle  height,  but  strongly  built  with  square 
shoulders  and  remarkably  fine  face  and  head:  the 
features  were  almost  classically  regular,  the  eyes 
dark  brown  and  large,  the  forehead  high,  the  hair, 
moustache  and  small  "Imperial"  as  black  as  jet: 
he  carried  a  monocle,  was  always  well-dressed  and 
looked  like  a  handsome  Frenchman.  His  manners 
were  perfectly  frank  and  natural:  he  met  every  one 
in  the  same  unaffected,  kindly,  human  way:  I  never 
saw  a  trace  in  him  of  snobbishness  or  incivility.  Pos- 
sibly a  great  man,  I  said  to  myself,  certainly  a  man 
of  genius,  for  simplicity  of  manner  alone  is  in  Eng- 
land almost  a  proof  of  extraordinary  endowment.  I 
soon  noticed  one  little  peculiarity  in  Davidson,  which 
I  afterwards  remarked  in  other  poets:  his  enuncia- 
tion was  exceptionally  distinct:  every  word  had  its 
value  to  him,  each  syllable  its  weight. 

I  met  him  with  a  slight  embarrassment.  Though 
I  was  editor  of  the  review,  the  managing  director, 


JOHN  DAVIDSON:  AD  MEMORIAM     129 

Mr.  Frederic  Chapman,  expected  to  be  consulted  be- 
fore any  abnormal  expense  was  incurred  or  any  ex- 
traordinary article  accepted.  In  my  elation  I  had 
laid  The  Ballad  of  the  Nun  before  him  and  hoped 
he  would  allow  me  to  pay  £50  for  It.  To  my  aston- 
ishment he  scouted  the  Idea  :  "poetry  didn't  pay,"  he 
assured  me,  "never  had  paid,  never  would  pay;  a 
fiver  was  plenty  to  give  for  any  poem :  all  poets  were 
hard  up  .  .  .  five  pounds  would  buy  the  best  any 
of  them  could  do." 

It  was  no  use  trying  to  alter  his  opinion.  I  had 
scarcely  made  up  my  mind  to  plead  poverty  to  Da- 
vidson when  Chapman  came  to  my  room  and  begged 
me  not  to  publish  the  poem  on  any  account:  he  had 
read  the  verses  I  had  praised  and  he  thought  them 
disgustingly  licentious.  In  vain  I  argued  and  quoted : 
I  was  up  against  the  tradesman's  view  of  art,  and  an 
English  tradesman  at  that.  There  was  nothing  to  be 
done  but  accept  the  brainless  decision  or  throw  up 
my  post.  I  had  to  be  taught  that  to  edit  a  review 
in  London  Is  not  to  be  a  priest  In  the  Temple  of  the 
Spirit,  but  the  shopman  pander  to  a  childish  public 
with  an  insatiable  appetite  for  whatever  Is  conven- 
tional and  commonplace. 

Davidson  made  such  a  good  impression  on  me  that 
I  told  him  the  truth:  the  poem  would  have  Its  place 
in  English  literature,  but  my  directors  would  not 
publish  It.  He  took  the  disappointment  perfectly, 
confessed  that  he  would  have  hked  the  ballad  to  ap- 


130      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

pear  In  The  Fortnightly;  adding  handsomely  that  my 
appreciation  of  It  was  sufficient  compensation,  and 
so  forth. 

From  that  time  on  we  were  friends,  and  met  half 
a  dozen  times  every  season  as  one  meets  friends  in 
London.  Such  of  our  meetings  as  marked  rings  of 
growth  In  our  Intimacy  I  shall  find  a  mournful  pleas- 
ure In  recalling  here,  for  long  before  the  tragic  end 
Davidson  had  become  dear  to  me. 

The  growth  of  friendship  like  the  growth  of  love 
in  my  experience  proceeds  often  by  leaps  and  bounds 
and  not  by  gradual,  imperceptible  accretions  as  the 
young  are  apt  to  imagine.  Like  love,  friendship  has 
to  be  won,  Is  Indeed  also  a  twin  flower  of  desire  and 
conquest.  I  accuse  myself  now  of  taking  Davidson's 
friendship  too  much  for  granted;  but  It  seemed  valu- 
able to  me  from  the  first,  and  I  tried  to  Introduce  him 
to  people  who  might  have  been  of  use  to  him.  He 
was  unwilling  to  come  out  of  his  shell,  not  from 
shyness,  but  pride. 

Once,  however,  I  succeeded. 

I  took  him  to  a  house  at  Wimbledon  where  his 
poetry  was  already  known  and  loved.  As  soon  as 
Davidson  found  he  was  among  friends  and  admirers 
who  could  appreciate  his  work,  he  let  himself  go  with 
the  ingenuousness  of  a  boy.  He  recited  passages 
that  he  liked  in  his  own  work  or  the  work  of  others, 
and,  of  course,  one  noticed  immediately  that  he  had 
an   extraordinary  knowledge   of   the   best  English 


JOHN  DAVIDSON:  AD  MEMORIAM      131 

poetry.  Like  most  poets,  he  chanted  his  lines,  mark- 
ing the  metre  of  the  verse  a  little  too  distinctly;  but 
there  was  a  certain  impressiveness  in  the  peculiarity. 
And  how  sincere  he  was  and  how  enthusiastic  when 
repeating  the  verses  he  loved:  one  could  hear  thrill- 
ing across  the  rhythm  his  intimate  understanding  and 
generous  admiration.  It  was  in  this  spirit  he  quoted 
something  of  Burns,  whom  I  had  been  running  down 
just  to  see  if  his  patriotism  would  revolt.  He  had 
no  conscious  local  vanity,  and  he  recognized  certain 
of  Burns's  limitations,  but,  as  a  Scot,  he  could  not 
help  overrating  him. 

Again  and  again  on  this  occasion  Davidson  com- 
plained of  his  memory;  but  the  listeners  had  reason 
to  wonder  at  its  fidelity.  He  complained,  too,  as  I 
often  heard  him  complain  afterwards,  of  his  fum- 
bling speech.  "With  a  pen  in  hand  I  am  articulate," 
he  cried,  "but  my  tongue's  a  poor  instrument."  It 
was,  in  fact,  a  very  good  instrument,  though  doubt- 
less his  pen  was  better. 

It  is  only  in  his  books  that  the  creative  artist  can 
reveal  his  peculiar  gift;  in  conversation,  however 
intimate,  he  seldom  is  able  to  show  more  than  the 
intellectual  or  critical  side  of  his  talent.  This  ana- 
lytic critical  faculty  is  only  the  obverse  of  the  syn- 
thetic creative  power,  and  whatever  shortcomings 
there  are  in  the  one  can  usually  be  traced  in  the 
other.  Goethe  overpraised  honest  mediocrities  be- 
cause there  was  such  heavy  German  paste  in  him 


132      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

that  he  could  enjoy  drivel  and  produce  deserts  of 
dullness  such  as  ensure  oblivion  to  the  fVanderjahre. 
I  felt  pretty  sure  that  Davidson  would  not  give  me 
ready-made  or  popular  judgments;  as  an  original 
poet  he  would  have  his  own  creed,  a  new  canon. 
And  a  most  original  critic  he  showed  himself,  as  I 
had  expected. 

What  appeared  at  first  to  be  a  freakish  sincerity 
marked  all  his  literary  judgments;  most  of  his  pref- 
erences were  based  on  reason,  though  the  reason 
didn't  always  seem  adequate.  This  tantalizing  un- 
expectedness was,  of  course,  the  tap-root  of  his 
genius,  the  proof  of  his  originality.  Let  me  recall 
some  of  his  judgments.  He  declared  that  "  'The 
Song  of  the  Shirt'  was  the  most  important  English 
poem  of  the  nineteenth  century:  'The  woman  in 
unwomanly  rags  plying  her  needle  and  thread'  was 
of  the  very  stuff  of  great  poetry."  And  James 
Thomson  in  natural  endowment  was  the  first  Enghsh 
poet  of  his  time,  high  throned  among  the  Immor- 
tals. Tennyson,  on  the  other  hand,  was  only  a  mas- 
ter-craftsman, both  he  and  Browning  mere  bour- 
geois optimists.  Burns  could  see,  he  said,  and  Blake 
had  vision  at  times,  and  Wordsworth  profoundly; 
Swinburne  was  nothing  but  an  amorist. 

Davidson's  reverence  was  all  for  the  spirit  and 
not  the  letter,  sincerity  to  him  was  the  hall-mark 
of  genius.  Among  the  living  Meredith  was  "our 
foremost  man  of  letters,"  while  Yeats  was  only  "the 


JOHN  DAVIDSON:  AD  MEMORIAM      133 

seer  of  the  twilight,  the  singer  of  'pearl-pale'  fingers 
and  *dove-grey'  seaboards,"  and  Shaw  hardly  more 
than  a  "humorist."  His  appreciation  of  form  as 
became  a  poet  was  wellnigh  perfect,  but  all  his  ad- 
miration even  in  those  early  days  went  to  the  teach- 
ers and  not  to  the  singers. 

Gradually  we  won  Davidson  to  speak  of  himself: 
he  had  come,  he  said,  of  Scotch  peasant  stock:  put 
his  thick  strong  hands  with  short  spatulated  fingers 
forward  as  evidence  of  his  workman  origin — "the 
mark  of  the  ploughman,"  he  called  them.  And 
then  he  spoke  of  the  delicacy  of  constitution  shown 
in  his  relatively  thin  neck;  one  would  think,  he  said, 
that  a  thick  neck  would  show  a  brain  well  fed  with 
large  blood  vessels;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it's  always 
a  sign  of  exorbitant  animalism.  I  had  noticed  his 
comparatively  thin  neck,  too,  and  mentioned  that  it 
usually  went  with  other  signs  of  delicacy,  such  as 
fine  silky  thick  hair:  but  Davidson  contended  that 
his  hair  was  not  fine  and  not  thick,  and  when  he  saw 
me  unconvinced  he  suddenly  put  up  his  hand  and  in 
a  twinkhng  plucked  off  a  "transformation"  and  dis- 
covered an  astonishing  dome  of  bald  forehead.  We 
couldn't  help  laughing,  and  I  asked  him  why  he  wore 
such  a  thing.  "I  was  prematurely  bald,"  he  said, 
"and  a  little  ashamed  of  looking  so  old;  now  I'm 
thinking  of  leaving  my  head  as  it  is;  but  the  flies  an- 
noy me,  and  so  I  put  off  the  decision."  A  few  years 
later  he  doffed  the  disguise  finally,  and  I  think  his 


134      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

appearance  was  improved  thereby,  for  his  fore- 
head was  remarkable — domed  like  Swinburne's  and 
Shakespeare's. 

Thinking  over  my  first  long  talks  with  Davidson 
I  came  to  the  conclusion  that,  having  sprung  from 
the  people  and  suffered  a  good  deal  from  poverty, 
he  gave  undue  importance  to  the  condition  of  the 
laboring  class  and  the  poor  without  sufficient  sym- 
pathy with  the  intellectuals  who  deserve  more  help 
and  are  still  worse  off.  Besides,  he  was  a  little  in- 
fluenced by  the  undeserved  neglect  shown  to  his  own 
works.  He  had  a  passionate  admiration  for  all  the 
great  spirits  of  the  past,  and  even  for  the  really  great 
of  his  own  generation:  but  he  was  apt  to  be  un- 
just to  the  lesser  lights  of  the  time  who  for  some 
reason  or  other  had  achieved  popularity. 

He  could  not  stand  Henley,  for  instance,  and 
spoke  of  him  disdainfully:  said  laughingly:  "I  wrote 
a  couplet  on  him  once  because  he's  always  sheltering 
himself  behind  Byron  to  depreciate  contemporaries 
more  important  than  his  idol: 

Behind  the  gallant  verse,  the  gallant  prose; 
A  little  soul:  its  finger  to  its  nose. 

"You  remember,"  he  added,  "how  Lamb  called 
Wordsworth  'the  Beadle  of  Parnassus' — good?  isn't 
it?     We  don't  want  beadles  1" 

"Excellent,"  I  cried,  "I  hadn't  heard  it  before. 


JOHN  DAVIDSON:  AD  MEMORIAM     135 

My  judgment  of  Henley,"  I  went  on,  "is  as  dis- 
dainful as  yours :  I  always  called  him  Pistol  Redivi- 
vus.    You  remember  his  verse : 

It  matters  not  how  straight  the  gate. 
How  charged  with  punishment  the  scroll, 
I  am  the  INIaster  of  my  fate, 
I  am  the  Captain  of  my  Soul." 

"It  does,  indeed,  deserve  to  be  called  'The  Swan 
Song  of  Pistol!'  "  cried  Davidson. 

"Yet  one  couldn't  help  pitying  him,"  I  rejoined, 
"with  his  splendid  torso  and  leonine  head,  and  those 
terrible,  twisted  legs." 

"Why  'pity'?"  replied  Davidson;  "after  all,  it 
was  his  own  fault.  If  a  man  will  take  brainless  risks, 
he  has  only  himself  to  blame  for  the  inevitable  con- 
sequences." 

I  thought  this  a  hard  saying. 

"You  would  not  exclude  pity,"  I  cried:  "thank 
God!  we  don't  all  get  punished  according  to  our 
transgressions.  The  world  would  be  a  dreadful 
place  if  Justice  reigned:  which  of  us  would  escape 
whipping?" 

"I  don't  agree,"  cried  Davidson,  with  a  Scotch 
love  of  argument  and  a  certain  personal  bitterness 
in  the  tone;  "I  only  want  justice,  nothing  more, 
nothing  less.  Do  you  remember  the  astonishing 
lines?  I  think  them  as  fine  as  anything  of  Shake- 
speare : 


136      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

This  toils  my  body,  this  consumeth  age. 

That  only  I  to  all  men  just  must  be. 

And  neither  gods  nor  men  be  just  to  me. 


"A  cry  from  the  inmost  heart — eh?" 

I  nodded,  for  I  knew  The  Spanish  Tragedy,  and 
Davidson  went  on: 

"See  how  Stephen  Phillips  is  being  puffed  into 
popularity  by  the  academic  critics,  the  Sidney  Colvins 
and  other  such  nonentities:  it  irritates  and  disgusts 
me." 

"Some  of  his  dramatic  stuff,"  I  chimed  in,  "is  in- 
deed uninspired  enough  to  be  popular." 

"You  should  print  my  verse  about  him  as  a  cor- 
rective," cried  Davidson,  and  he  recited  merrily: 

Because  our  Homer  sometimes  nods 
The  Ancient  Bard  who  went  before. 

Is  that  a  reason,  oh,  ye  Gods, 

Should  Stephen  Phillips  always  snore? 

"His  Paolo  and  Francesca  seems  to  me  a  beauti- 
ful love-duet,"  I  said,  "not  nearly  so  fine  as  Romeo 
and  Juliet,  but  still  in  its  own  way  delightful  and  in- 
teresting." 

"No  Mercutio,  no  Nurse;  nothing  objective  in 
it,"  cried  Davidson,  "a  mere  lyric  of  love." 

I  could  not  accept  his  judgment,  and  to  find  out 
just  where  he  stood  I  said  something  in  praise  of 


JOHN  DAVIDSON:  AD  MEMORIAM     137 

Dowson.  Davidson  was  a  little  unfair  to  him,  too, 
I  thought, 

"I  have  been  faithful  to  thee,  Cynara,  in  my  fash- 
ion," strikes  a  note  that  always  vibrates  in  me:  but 
he  would  not  have  it. 

"One  swallow  does  not  make  a  summer,"  he  cried, 
"nor  one  poem  a  poet:  a  poet  is  a  sacred  singer,  not 
a  sort  of  mechanical  toy  with  only  one  tune  in  its 
throat."  (He  appeared  to  forget  that  this  canon 
ruled  out  his  favorite,  Hood.) 

While  admitting  whatever  force  there  was  in  his 
contention,  I  insisted  that  all  artists  today,  especially 
all  poets  and  writers  in  England,  were  lamentably 
underpaid  and  misesteemed. 

"Don't  for  God's  sake  let  us  grudge  any  of  them 
such  popularity  as  they  may  win.  They'll  never  get 
enough  appreciation  of  any  sort  to  make  up  for  their 
trials.    .    .    . 

"No  writer  in  England  should  ever  dispute  the 
justice  of  the  reward  given  to  any  of  our  clan:  we 
should  all  exalt  our  work  like  actors  do,  and  try  to 
get  more  for  it,  but  never  depreciate  another  of  the 
tribe.  By  holding  together  we  shall  the  sooner  come 
into  our  kingdom." 

Davidson,  I  believe,  did  not  realize  fully  what  I 
was  driving  at;  nor  did  I  care  to  push  my  theories 
on  him,  being  more  intent  at  the  moment  on  getting 
a  fair  mental  portrait  of  him. 

It  was  his  sincerity  which  struck  me  most  at  the 


138      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

outset;  three  or  four  years  later  he  showed  me  that 
his  unswerving  loyalty  to  truth  was  an  even  deeper 
characteristic  and  had  brought  him  to  many-sided 
wisdom.  He  saw  his  own  people  with  the  unflinch- 
ing direct  vision  which  Dante  turned  on  his  Flor- 
entines. 

"The  English,"  he  said  one  day,  "from  the  peer 
to  the  prentice,  are  the  middle-class  of  Europe,  the 
prosperous  pushing  shopwalkers  of  the  world." 

Napoleon  saw  it  first,  but  Davidson  realized  the 
truth  a  little  more  completely. 

Davidson  was  probably  the  first  to  declare  that 
"the  modern  scientific  spirit  In  literature,  the  re- 
solve to  see  things  as  they  are,  and  say  what  we  are 
relentlessly  is  a  great  mood.  The  mood  in  which 
men  and  women  wish  to  be  and  be  known,  as  they 
are,  to  respect  and  be  respected,  to  love  and  be  loved 
simply  for  what  they  are,  is  the  greatest  mood  for 
hundreds  of  years." 

Such  a  view  proves  by  itself  that  Davidson  had 
real  insight,  and  his  judgments  were  usually  sane 
enough  if  his  point  of  view  were  taken  into  account. 
This  fairness  of  judgment,  however,  never  excluded 
a  love  of  whimsical  overstatement.  Once  in  a  com- 
bative mood  he  asserted  that  one  good  poem  was 
worth  a  dozen  short  stories.  I  didn't  feel  inclined 
to  treat  the  absurdity  seriously;  but  he  persisted, 
gravely  assuming  that  the  survival  of  Homer's 
poetry  proved  its   superiority  over  all  prose.     At 


JOHN  DAVIDSON:  AD  MEMORIAM     139 

length  I  was  compelled  to  ask  him  which  verses  hi 
Homer  he  would  put  above  the  story  of  The  Prodi- 
gal Son?     Was  any  poetry  better  than: 

"This  my  son  was  dead  and  is  alive  again,  was  lost 
and  is  found." 

He  laughed  at  once  charmingly. 

"We  all  know  our  own  trade  best,"  he  chuckled, 
delighted  at  having  drawn  me. 

The  worst  of  any  attempt  to  give  a  pen-portrait 
of  a  man  one  has  known  Is  that  one  Is  so  apt  to  deal 
chiefly  with  his  Intellect  and  give  a  picture  of  his 
mind  without  showing  his  heart  and  temperament. 
It  should  be  Impossible  for  me  to  talk  of  Davidson 
without  insisting  again  and  again  on  his  generous 
sympathy  and  the  charm  of  his  companionship.  His 
whimsicalities  of  judgment  were  really  proof  of  his 
chivalric  earnestness.  If  he  had  thought  that  Hen- 
ley had  been  ill-used  by  the  world,  or  if  he  had  felt 
that  Henley  had  given  great  work,  or  much  love  to 
the  world,  nothing  would  have  Induced  him  to  say 
a  word  against  him.  His  thirst  was  for  justice:  he 
was  always  trying  to  establish  the  equitable  balance: 
James  Thomson  had  been  neglected,  therefore  he 
overpraised  James  Thomson.  Meredith  was  pass- 
ing through  his  day  almost  unnoticed.  Davidson 
never  let  his  name  go  by  without  the  warmest  com- 
mendation.    And  this  chivalry  of  disposition  went 


I40      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

with  a  sweet  temper,  a  quick  sense  of  humor,  and 
the  most  generous  appreciation  of  his  friends  and 
of  contemporary  work. 

He  endured  poverty,  too,  heroically  and  without 
murmur  or  tinge  of  envy,  though  with  the  years  it 
became  increasingly  burdensome  to  him.  His  wife 
and  he  came  to  stay  a  few  days  with  us  once.  Mrs. 
Davidson  was  a  very  pretty  and  very  charming  per- 
son, whom  I  was  glad  to  know  better.  I  found  her 
very  simple  and  sympathetic.  One  evening  the  fire 
was  a  little  warm,  and  Davidson  and  I  had  talked 
philosophy  for  some  time  and  wearied  the  ladies. 
At  length  Davidson  began  reciting  one  of  his  later 
philosophic  poems,  in  his  usual  somewhat  monoto- 
nous chanting  way:  it  was  very  long,  and  he  went 
on  and  on,  encouraged  by  my  interest;  suddenly  we 
discovered  that  Mrs.  Davidson  had  fallen  asleep. 

Davidson  took  the  Interruption  perfectly. 

"No  wonder  she  fell  asleep,"  he  said  sympathetic- 
ally. "She  must  be  tired  out.  We  are  too  poor  to 
keep  a  servant  always,  and  sometimes  the  household 
work  Is  too  much  for  her,  poor  dear ! 

"Isn't  it  a  shame?"  he  added,  "that  I  can't  get  a 
decent  living  for  myself  and  my  wife;  though  I  work 
incessantly,  and  as  hard  as  ever  I  can." 

"What  do  your  books  bring  In?"  I  asked. 

"About  a  hundred  pounds  a  year,"  he  replied;  "I 
couldn't  live  on  them :  but  now  and  then  I  get  a  wind- 
fall that  tides  us  along.    Lewis  Waller  gave  me  £250 


JOHN  DAVIDSON:  AD  MEMORIAM     141 

for  my  translation  of  Riiy  Bias.  Did  you  see  the 
play?  I  called  it  Tlie  Queen's  Romance-,  it  went 
about  fifty  nights.  If  it  had  gone  another  week,  I'd 
have  made  more  money  out  of  it.  I  think  luck  has 
been  a  little  against  me.  Mrs.  Langtry,  you  know, 
Lady  de  Bathe,  gave  me  £250  for  a  play:  Mile. 
Mars:  it  went  into  rehearsal;  I  had  built  mountain- 
ous hopes  on  it:  King  Edward  suddenly  paid  a  visit 
to  her  theatre  and  in  consequence  the  play  she  had, 
revived  and  she  didn't  need  mine.  Tree,  too,  paid 
me  for  a  translation  of  Cyrano  de  Bergerac;  but 
never  put  it  on,  and  George  Alexander  for  a  play  on 
Launcelot  and  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell  for  a  version 
of  the  Phedre.  I  don't  know  what  we  should  have 
done  without  such  windfalls.  Before  our  two  boys 
grew  up  and  began  to  fend  for  themselves  it  was 
often  very  hard  to  make  both  ends  meet." 

"Is  It  quiet  where  you  live  now?"  I  asked. 

"Streatham  is  rather  noisy,"  he  replied,  "but  the 
noises  don't  prevent  my  writing,  thank  God!" 

"Why  don't  you  do  more  journalism?"  I  probed 
further,  thinking  that  this  might  be  the  means  by 
which  his  writing  talent  could  come  to  the  assistance 
of  his  genius. 

"I'm  unfitted  for  it,"  he  replied,  "for  anything  at 
all  Indeed  except  poetry:  prose  takes  me  more  time 
and  effort.  I  must  just  go  on  as  best  I  can:  there's 
no  other  outlet  or  hope  for  me." 

"What  a  shame !"  I  cried,  "that  men  of  letters  are 


142      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

not  subsidized  in  England!  Have  you  ever  ap- 
proached the  Government  for  a  pension?" 

"Friends  have  spoken  of  it,"  he  replied,  "but  I 
don't  think  anything  has  been  done." 

"Something  must  be  done,"  I  urged;  "you  should 
stir  them  up,  get  them  to  act." 

"No  good  now,"  he  said,  "something  may  be 
done  later  when  the  Liberals  come  in.  I've  always 
been  a  Radical,  you  know,"  he  added,  a  little 
proudly,  I  thought. 

I  don't  know  why  it  never  struck  me  that  I  should 
use  any  of  the  papers  I  edited  to  puff  Davidson  into 
prominence.  I  cannot  account  for  my  own  shame- 
ful negligence  in  this  respect.  I  can  only  admit  the 
fact  and  partially  explain  it  by  saying  that  Davidson 
always  seemed  to  me  properly  appreciated.  All  the 
writers  I  spoke  to  about  him  recognized  his  genius: 
they  didn't  perhaps  put  him  as  high  as  I  did,  but  one 
and  all  realized  that  he  would  be  among  the  English 
poets  when  he  died.  It  seemed  almost  impertinent 
to  praise  such  a  master;  but  this  excuse  is  rather  an 
apology  than  the  simple  truth:  the  truth  is,  I  never 
thought  of  puffing  Davidson  any  more  than  Ber- 
nard Shaw  or  Harold  Frederic,  or  anyone  who  didn't 
expressly  ask  to  be  noticed.  My  dreadful  negligence 
in  this  respect  was  brought  home  to  me  bitterly  when 
it  was  too  late,  for  I  was  told  that  Davidson  had 
been  hurt  a  little  by  my  reticence.  Had  he  said  a 
word  to  me  I'd  have  done  anything  I  could :  but  he 


JOHN  DAVIDSON:  AD  MEMORIAM     143 

was  too  proud  to  ask,  I  suppose,  and  I  too  much  en- 
grossed in  other  matters  to  think  even  of  helping 
my  friend.  The  only  plea  I  can  urge  in  mitigation 
of  my  seeming  callousness  is  that  today  the  fight 
is  so  hot  for  all  of  us  writers  and  artists,  that  we 
are  apt  to  overlook  even  sacred  obligations  if  they 
are  not  pressed  upon  our  notice. 

About  this  time  my  health  broke  down,  and  for 
some  years  I  was  in  many  difficulties:  when  I  par- 
tially emerged  in  1904,  or  1905,  I  met  Davidson 
again,  and  found  him  changed:  he  had  grown  self- 
assertive,  and  at  the  same  time  had  developed  a  cer- 
tain bitterness  of  attitude  which  seemed  out  of  tune 
with  his  kindly  temperament  and  fair  habit  of  mind. 
All  men  need  to  have  a  good  conceit  of  themselves 
in  order  to  go  through  life  sanely;  we  should  all 
grow  thick,  hard  shells  of  conceit  like  lobsters  to 
protect  our  sensibilities  from  rude  hands.  And  if 
this  is  true  of  all  men  it  is  tenfold  truer  of  the  writer 
and  artist  who  has  to  persist  in  being  at  his  best  and 
doing  his  best  in  spite  of  the  amused  contempt  or 
neglect  of  his  contemporaries. 

The  conditions  of  life  for  the  poet  or  artist  are  a 
thousand  times  severer  than  most  men  imagine.  In 
the  usual  walks  of  life — in  trade  or  in  the  profes- 
sions— high  talent  or  industry  is  associated  with  re- 
ward; the  barrister  who  becomes  a  learned  law- 
yer or  a  great  advocate,  the  doctor  who  shows 
exceptional  capacity  is  almost  certain  to  win  position 


144      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

and  a  competence;  at  fifty  he  can  reckon  on  having 
a  large  income  and  an  easy  and  honored  life.  But 
the  poet  or  artist  has  to  face  an  altogether  different 
experience;  the  progress  he  makes  in  his  art  divorces 
him  from  popularity;  it  is  ordinary  sentiment  in  ordi- 
nary jingle  that  pays;  every  step  the  artist  makes  of 
comprehension  and  accomphshment  removes  him 
further  from  the  mass  of  men  and  from  success. 
His  growth  leads  him  inevitably  from  the  praise  of 
his  fellows  to  their  disdain  and  hatred.  If  he  feels  it 
in  him  to  reach  the  level  of  Dante  or  Shakespeare, 
he  will  pass  from  a  certain  popularity  and  respect,  to 
contempt  and  dislike  and  may  account  himself  for- 
tunate if  the  hatred  of  him  does  not  turn  to  active 
persecution  and  punishment.  And  if  in  spite  of  all 
this,  the  soldier  of  the  ideal  dedicates  his  soul  to  the 
highest  and  dares  the  uttermost,  he  knows  that  his 
crown  will  be  of  thorns,  his  kingship  a  derision,  his 
throne,  a  cross. 

All  the  time,  it  is  true,  he  will  be  buoyed  up  by  the 
consciousness  that  he  is  in  intimate  relation  with  the 
soul  of  things,  or,  if  you  will,  by  his  own  self-esteem. 
It  is  dangerous  to  take  such  self-assurance  as  a  guide, 
though  it  is  very  difficult  not  to  trust  the  high  self- 
estimate  which  has  helped  you  again  and  again  to 
achievement.  The  higher  one  climbs  the  more  diffi- 
cult and  perilous  the  next  ascent.  Failure  is  certain 
ultimately:  failure  and  a  fall.  Sooner  or  later  the 
dark  hour  comes  for  all  of  us. 


JOHN  DAVIDSON:  AD  MEMORIAM     145 

When  he  was  over  forty  years  of  age  Davidson 
reached  this  pass.  Starting  from  near  the  bottom  of 
the  social  hierarchy,  he  had  won  to  the  very  top :  he 
had  made  a  name  as  common  as  Smith  immortal ;  had 
crowned  himself  in  the  Temple  not  made  with  hands, 
eternal  in  the  Heavens,  and  yet  he  was  confronted 
with  the  vast  indifference  of  the  public  that  cares  less 
for  poets  than  for  acrobats,  and  exposed  to  the  envi- 
ous attacks  of  venomous  poetasters  and  journalists, 
and  this  at  a  time  when  he  was  without  money  and 
without  influence,  but  with  health  failing  and  disease 
threatening.  It  is  to  Davidson's  honor  that  In  that 
dread  hour  he  never  whimpered  or  whined  or  thought 
of  giving  in;  instead  of  abating  his  high  pretensions 
as  a  poet,  he  set  them  higher  still;  he  would  be  a 
prophet  as  well,  or  rather  he  was  a  prophet,  and 
what  was  true  to  him,  that  he  would  set  forth  with  all 
emphasis.  Alas  !  in  spite  of  his  sincerity  and  unswerv- 
ing devotion  to  truth,  in  spite  of  all  his  gifts  as  a 
singer,  and  all  his  goodness  as  lover  and  father  and 
friend,  he  could  discover  no  light  in  the  darkness, 
no  sun,  no  star.  But  his  courage  held;  he  would  sing 
all  encompassing  Night,  then,  and  Nothingness,  and 
himself  set  therein  sightless  yet  a  god!  the  only  god, 
indeed! 

That  way  madness  lies:  such  pride  dwarfs  the 
mind  and  maims  the  soul. 

In  the  sad  preface  to  his  last  work,  Fleet  Street 
and  Other  Poems,  he  says:    "Men  should  no  longer 


St  Winifreds. 

Fairmile  Avenue, 

Streatham.S.W. 


146      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

degrade  themselves  under  such  appellations  as  Chris- 
tian, Mohammedan,  Agnostic,  Monist.  Men  are  the 
Universe  become  conscious,"  and  so  forth.  That 
"degrade  themselves"  is  somewhat  overpitched.  No 
one  calls  himself  Christian  who  does  not  feel  that  he 
Is  thereby  doing  his  best  to  ennoble  himself,  and 
if  Man  is  the  Universe  become  conscious  is  there  not 
hope  in  that  and  joy?  Man's  striving  towards  the 
best  is  as  splendid  as  the  struggle  of  the  flower  to 
the  light,  and  there  is  a  measure  of  happiness  for 
both  in  the  success  and  the  sunshine. 

There  is  some  truth  in  Davidson's  gospel  of  the 
man-god,  though  he  vastly  overrated  its  importance. 
All  we  know  of  God  or  of  the  Time-Spirit  and 
purpose  of  things  is  drawn  from  our  knowledge  of 
ourselves;  to  himself  man  is  god,  and  the  upward 
groping  and  growth  of  his  own  soul  is  the  only 
revelation  of  the  Divine  which  we  mortals  can  know. 
This  idea  overpowered  Davidson :  he  would  not  be- 
lieve that  anyone  else  had  ever  seen  it,  or  at  least 
grasped  its  full  significance,  he,  Davidson,  and  he 
alone,  for  the  first  time  was  the  Universe  grown  con- 
scious, and  perhaps  for  the  last  time;  the  supreme 
purpose  being  accomplished,  the  Universe  might  now 
dislimn  and  return  to  chaos.  In  his  Testame?tt  he 
set  forth  the  stupendous  presumption: 

I  dare  not,  must  not  die:  I  am  the  sight 
And  hearing  of  the  infinite;  in  me 


JOHN  DAVIDSON:  AD  MEMORIAM     147 

Matter  fulfils  itself;  before  me  none 

Beheld  or  heard^  imagined^  thought  or  felt; 

And  though  I  make  the  mystery  known  to  men, 

It  may  be  none   hereafter   shall  achieve 

The  perfect  purpose  of  eternity; 

It  may  be  that  the  Universe  attains 

Self-knowledge  only  once;  and  when  I  cease 

To  see  and  hear,  imagine,  think  and  feel. 

The  end  may  come,  and  matter,  satisfied. 

Devolve  once  more  through  wanton  change,  and  tides 

Of  slow  relapse,  suns,  systems,  galaxies. 

Back  to  ethereal  oblivion,  pure 

Accomplished  darkness.  Night  immaculate 

Augmenting  everlastingly  in  space.    .    .    . 

He  had  lost  all  measure,  he  did  not  see  that  the 
coming  to  complete  consciousness  is  a  sign  of  maturity 
in  the  individual,  and  that  all  the  great  work,  all  the 
finest  achievements  come  later. 

The  world  is  young  and  not  old,  mankind  a  youth 
still,  in  the  brisk  morning  of  life  indeed,  surcharged 
with  health  and  vigor,  electric  with  courage  and 
hope,  eyes  aglow  with  heavenly  radiance!  Instead 
of  singing  himself  as  the  ultimate,  Davidson  should 
have  sung  himself  as  herald  and  harbinger  of  the 
great  time  coming. 

No  Thor  can  drain  the  ocean !  Davidson  was  not 
content  with  the  fragment  of  fame  he  had  achieved; 
he  would  have  all  men  acknowledge  his  greatness; 
he  was  tragically  ambitious,  impious  in  self-asser- 


148      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

tlon ;  the  Scotch  preacher  vein  In  him  becoming  more 
and  more  dominant  choked  the  sweet  poetry. 

Every  time  we  met  from  1907  onwards  there  was 
deterioration  in  him :  the  worse  he  did,  the  higher  he 
put  his  claims.  If  one  praised  his  poetry  and  begged 
him  to  give  the  world  more  of  it,  he  pooh-poohed  it 
all.  I  reminded  him  once  of  how  exquisitely  he  had 
written  of  larks  and  their  singing,  and  he  replied: 

"My  dear  Frank,  Shelley  did  it  better,  and  I  have 
better  things  to  do,  greater  songs  to  sing;  which  you 
will  not  listen  to." 

"I'm  ready  to  listen,"  I  cried;  but  he  shrugged  his 
shoulders  and  drew  silence  about  him  as  a  garment. 
I  was  full  of  disquiet  and  distress  about  him  and 
wondered  how  he  would  pull  through.  Then  the 
news  of  his  pension  came  and  delighted  me.  It  has 
come  In  the  very  nick  of  time,  I  exulted,  to  save  him 
from  himself :  true,  It  is  only  £  1 00  a  year ;  but  that  to 
Davidson  is  a  great  deal,  and  it  is  the  full  and  fitting 
and  perfect  reply  of  the  Future  to  the  vile  journal- 
ists' attacks  on  him  of  the  moment.  Now  he  Is  saved, 
I  thought,  and  will  surely  do  better  than  ever. 

A  few  days  later  I  met  him  at  the  door  of  the 
Cafe  Royal  in  Regent  Street  and  congratulated  him 
warmly.  For  the  first  time  I  thought  he  posed  a 
little,  was  Inclined  to  be  pompous. 

"It  has  done  me  good,"  he  admitted,  "but  what 
I  like  about  It  Is,  it  Is  evidently  given  for  my  latest 


JOHN  DAVIDSON:  AD  MEMORIAM     149 

work.  Some  glimmering  of  the  truth  I've  sung  has 
pierced  the  darkness;  It's  a  sort  of  recognition." 

"Oh,  it's  immense,"  I  cried,  "an  English  Govern- 
ment gives  you  money,  says  one  poet  is  worth  sav- 
ing, helping:  it's  extraordinary,  it's  everything:  you 
must  really  be  pleased  and  proud  and  content.  We 
are  all  so  glad!" 

He  took  It  all  with  grave  dignity,  like  a  monarch 
receiving  homage,  I  thought;  and  holding  himself 
aloof  a  little  for  dignity's  sake. 

I  went  on  my  way  wondering  how  long  the  intoxi- 
cation would  last. 

Some  weeks  later  I  met  him  again :  he  was  down 
In  the  dumps.  When  I  referred  to  his  pension  he 
flew  out  at  me. 

"What's  a  hundred  a  year?  How  can  one  live 
on  it?  It's  almost  an  Insult.  They  give  so-and-so 
two  hundred  and  me  one — It's  absurd.    ..." 

"A  good  staff,  literature,"  I  replied,  "but  a  poor 
crutch;  still,  a  hundred  a  year  keeps  a  roof  over 
one's  head  and  a  door  closed  against  the  wolf." 

But  why,  I  wondered,  couldn't  the  English  Gov- 
ernment give  so  that  the  gift  itself  should  be  dignified 
by  the  giving.  Seeing  that  artists  and  prophets  and 
writers  have  scant  reward  In  the  money  way,  and 
if  they  belong  to  the  future  by  dint  of  greatness, 
scant  honor  in  the  present:  why  doesn't  the  House 
of  Commons,  the  great  Council  of  the  Nation,  set 
one  day  or  one  hour  aside  each  year  in  which  to  do 


I50      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

them  honor.  The  names  of  the  selected  candidates 
might  then  be  put  upon  the  roll  of  honor  and  the 
thanks  of  Parliament  be  accorded  to  them  and  re- 
corded. Those  who  seek  riches  and  succeed,  who, 
therefore,  deserve  least  of  their  fellow-men,  for  they 
take  much  and  give  little  or  nothing,  are  awarded 
titles  and  peerages  and  all  the  rest  of  it;  but  those 
who  have  given  their  lives  and  labor  to  the  ser- 
vice of  man  in  the  most  disinterested  way  get  neither 
wealth  nor  honor  nor  any  sort  of  recognition.  All 
this,  it  seems  to  me,  is  certain  to  be  altered,  and 
sooner  than  we  think. 

The  pension  given  to  Davidson  did  not  encourage 
him  for  long;  it  was  not  enough  to  cover  his  neces- 
sities. I  thought  his  disappointment  might  be  dis- 
sipated, and  took  him  for  a  long  talk.  We  dined  and 
spent  the  evening  together.  Late  that  night  he  spoke 
for  the  first  time  of  suicide  and  his  fear  of  cancer: 
he  dwelt  on  the  pain,  and,  above  all,  on  the  ignominy 
of  the  smell  that  accompanies  the  dreadful  disease. 
"A  stinking  death,"  he  called  it,  with  the  shuddering 
disgust  of  the  artist.  I  made  light  of  his  fears,  could 
not  believe  they  were  well  founded,  and  if  they  were, 
assured  him  he  would  meet  the  Arch-Fear  with  per- 
fect courage  as  he  had  met  and  conquered  worse 
devils  throughout  his  life.  After  all,  death  has  to 
be  faced  by  all  of  us! 

"But  cancer,  cancer  is  disgusting,"  he  cried;  "Pve 
always  loathed  and  dreaded  it.    Do  all  one's  fears  in 


JOHN  DAVIDSON:  AD  MEMORIAM     151 

life  materialize  to  torture  us?  You  say  all  our 
prayers  are  granted,  perhaps  all  our  fears,  too,  get 
realized?" 

After  we  had  parted  the  talk  came  back  to  me,  I 
felt  that  Davidson  was  really  depressed,  and  re- 
proached myself  for  not  having  encouraged  him  by 
demonstrating  the  unreality  of  his  fear;  a  vague 
anxiety  at  heart  told  me  it  was  not  well  with  him. 

Here  is  a  verse  from  that  time  heavy  with  hope- 
less misery,  which  shows  I  had  partly  divined  his 
mood: 

And  defeat  was  my  crown ! 

When,  naked,  I  wrestled  with  fate 
The  destinies  trampled  me  down: — 

I  fought  in  the  van  and  was  great. 
And  I  won,  though  I  wore  no  crown. 

In  the  lists  of  the  world;  for  fate 
And  the  destinies  trampled  me  down — 
The  myrmidons  trampled  me  down. 

The  darkest  page  in  Cervantes  tells  how  even 
Quixote  was  trampled  down  by  the  swine:  it  is  the 
same  dreadful  experience. 

When  Davidson  wrote  that  verse  despair  had 
taken  hold  of  him :  a  little  while  later  the  news  came 
that  he  had  disappeared;  a  little  later  still  that  he 
had  killed  himself.  The  first  words  of  the  preface 
to  his  last  work.  Fleet  Street,  were  pubHshed  as  the 
explanation : 


152      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

The  time  has  come  to  make  an  end.  There  are  several 
motives.  I  find  my  j^ension  is  not  enough;  I  have  there- 
fore still  to  turn  aside  and  attem^it  things  for  which  people 
will  pay.  My  health  also  counts.  Asthma  and  other  an- 
noyances I  have  tolerated  for  years ;  but  I  cannot  put  up 
with  cancer. 


Here  is  what  I  have  been  able  to  learn  of  the 
manner  of  his  death: 

A  year  or  so  before  he  had  taken  a  small  house 
in  Penzance  by  the  sea  and  gone  there  to  live  with 
his  wife  and  younger  son.  He  suffered  now  and  then 
from  pains  in  the  lower  intestines,  which  he  looked 
upon  as  a  symptom  of  some  cancerous  growth.  One 
IVlarch  evening,  after  working  all  day,  he  went  out 
to  post  a  batch  of  proofs  to  his  publisher  and  never 
returned  alive. 

At  the  inquest  the  doctor  said  he  had  found  what 
he  thought  was  a  bullet  hole  in  his  head. 

There  is  a  place  on  the  cliffs  where  a  young  man 
had  thrown  himself  into  the  sea  some  time  before 
and  been  drowned.  Davidson  reached  this  spot  af- 
ter nightfall;  what  decided  him  none  can  say:  it  is 
probable  that  he  shot  himself  through  the  head  while 
standing  so  that  his  body  must  fall  Into  the  waves 
surging  fifty  feet  below.  He  was  tragically  resolved 
to  make  sure. 

The  regret  of  all  who  knew  him  was  intensified  by 
the  fact  that  he  had  never  been  so  well-off:  he  had 


JOHN  DAVIDSON;  AD  MEMORIAM     153 

not  only  the  £100  a  year  of  the  Government;  but  his 
chief  publisher,  Mr.  Grant  Richards,  had  also  very 
generously  undertaken  to  give  him  another  £100  a 
year  regularly  for  his  poetry  and  he  could  reckon 
on  translations  of  plays  and  occasional  articles  to 
bring  him  in  as  much  more;  but  he  had  come  to  know 
his  real  value  and  his  true  position  as  seer  and  steers- 
man to  the  ship,  and  the  contrast  between  his  deserv- 
ing and  what  the  world  gave  was  too  humiliating. 

Besides,  he  had  done  most  of  his  work:  the  kernel 
of  it  was  there  in  The  Testaments  already  written; 
despairing  Foreword  written,  too;  sufficient  explana- 
tion :  all  the  silly  world  deserved ;  why  should  he  bear 
the  horrible  dagger-thrusts  of  pain  any  longer? — 
"the  time  has  come  to  make  an  end." 

Had  he  but  realized  how  his  desperate  deed 
would  darken  the  outlook  for  others,  he  would  have 
taken  courage  and  waited  for  Nature's  free- 
ing.   .    .    .    Dear,  brave  Davidson! 

The  coroner's  jury  brought  in  a  merciful  verdict 
— "found  drowned." 

The  news  shocked  the  town;  every  one  had  been 
talking  of  him  and  his  pension,  thinking  him  lucky 
to  have  got  it,  when  suddenly  he  threw  the  money 
back  in  the  faces  of  the  givers  and  left  the  arena  in 
disgust.  For  one  moment  the  desperate  act  made 
men  pause  and  think.  Had  he  been  treated  badly? 
Were  these  poets  not  merely  "the  idle  singers  of  an 
idle  day" ;  but  men  of  character,  capable  of  desperate 


154      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

resolution,  persons  to  be  proud  of  and  to  emulate, 
and  not  merely  amiable  "cranks"  to  be  half  pitied, 
half  despised? 

Some  pretended  he  had  killed  himself  because  of  a 
virulent  journalistic  attack  on  his  Testaments  by  a  rib- 
ald poetaster,  but  that  was  nonsense.  Better  than 
most  men  Davidson  knew  exactly  the  value  and 
meaning  of  such  envious  slander.  Years  before,  he 
had  written,  "If  a  poet  or  any  other  writer  can  be 
killed  by  criticism  the  sooner  it  is  done  the  better." 

But  for  a  moment  the  world  questioned.  Then 
the  tide  of  life  flowed  on  again  and  all  was  as  before. 
The  English  troubled  themselves  as  little  about  the 
suicide  as  they  had  troubled  themselves  about  the 
poet  or  the  prophet.  What  was  his  death,  after  all, 
but  another  man  gone  "where  we  all  must  go"? 

One  word  more,  when  after  some  three  months  of 
anxiety,  misery  and  searching  on  the  part  of  his 
sons  and  wife,  the  sea  gave  up  its  dead  and  what  re- 
mained of  John  Davidson  was  found  on  the  shore 
near  Penzance,  the  eldest  son  resolved  to  bury  his 
father  as  he  would  have  wished  to  be  buried.  With 
the  native  refinement  of  the  artist  Davidson  had  al- 
ways hated  the  idea  of  being  wound  in  swaddling- 
clothes  and  put  In  the  earth  to  decay.  He  had  told 
his  boys  whom  he  had  treated  as  "pals"  that  he 
would  prefer  to  be  buried  at  sea  and  his  sons  now 
carried  out  his  wishes.  They  took  his  remains  in  a 
funeral  launch  all  draped  in  black  and  when  far  out- 


JOHN  DAVIDSON:  AD  MEMORIAM     155 

side  the  three  miles  limit,  gave  him  to  the  freedom 
and  sweetness  of  the  deep  he  loved. 

Now  what  is  the  true  moral  or  permanent 
meaning  of  Davidson's  life  to  us  who  remain  and  to 
those  who  are  to  come  after  us?  It  was  undeniably 
a  great  life,  a  life  of  splendid  accomplishment,  of 
heroic  achievement.  Whatever  may  be  thought  of 
his  Testaments  and  his  prose  invocation  of  the 
Lords,  and  his  contemptuous  depreciation  of  the 
woman's  movement,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  John 
Davidson  was  a  man  of  large  and  liberal  mind  who 
spent  himself  in  devotion  to  high  purposes,  a  poet 
who  might  have  been  named  Greatheart,  whose  best 
verses  have  passed  into  the  language  and  form  part 
of  the  inheritance  of  the  race.  The  Last  Journey 
Is  the  finest  poem  of  the  sort  in  English  literature, 
though  both  Browning  and  Arnold  have  treated  the 
same  subject.  The  last  verses  of  it  reach  tragic 
grandeur: 

My  feet  are  heavy  now,  but  on  I  go. 

My  head  erect  beneath  the  tragic  years. 
The  way  is  steep,  but  I  would  have  it  so; 
And  dusty,  but  I  lay  the  dust  with  tears. 
Though  none  can  see  me  weep:  alone  I  climb 
The  rugged  path  that  leads  me  out  of  time — 

Out  of  time  and  out  of  all. 

Singing  yet  in  sun  and  rain, 

"Heel  and  toe  from  dawn  to  dusk. 

Round  the  world  and  home  again." 


156      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

Farewell  the  hope  that  mocked,  farewell  despair 
That  went  before  me  still  and  made  the  pace. 

The  earth  is  full  of  graves,  and  mine  was  there 
Before  my  life  began,  my  resting-jDlace; 

And  I  shall  find  it  out  and  with  the  dead 

Lie  down  for  ever,  all  my  sayings  said — 
Deeds  all  done  and  songs  all  sung. 
While  others  chant  in  sun  and  rain, 
"Heel  and  toe  from  dawn  to  dusk. 
Round  the  world  and  home  again." 

What  shall  be  said  of  the  man  who  could  write 
like  that?  Davidson  will  live  with  Burns,, it  seems  to 
me;  he  is  not  so  great  a  force:  he  has  not  Burns's 
pathos  nor  his  tenderness  nor  his  humor;  but  he 
does  not  write  in  a  dialect:  he  is  a  master  of  pure 
English,  and  his  best  work  touches  extremes  of 
beauty  and  tragic  sadness.  His  appalling  end,  too, 
is  a  sort  of  natural  canonization;  suicide  carries  with 
it  the  sanctity  of  supreme  suffering,  and  such  majestic 
singularity  defies  oblivion. 

This  Is  part  of  Davidson's  reward,  that  his  name 
will  be  remembered  for  ever,  and  his  unhappy  fate 
will  be  used  to  make  life  easier  for  men  of  genius 
in  the  future.  We  must  never  forget,  too,  that  if  ar- 
tistic creation  is  the  most  difficult,  most  arduous, 
most  nerve-shattering  toil  in  the  world,  yet  when  even 
partially  successful  it  has  the  highest  recompense  in 
triumphant  joy,  the  glory  of  the  spirit.    Our  friend, 


JOHN  DAVIDSON:  AD  MEMORIAM     157 

too,  had  his  moments  of  exultation  and  ecstasy  when 
he  hved  on  the  topmost  height  of  man's  achievement. 

But  people  say  that  Davidson  was  a  failure,  and 
talk  of  his  suicide  as  proof  of  weakness.  Whistler, 
they  assert,  won  through  to  success  and  wealth, 
whereas  Davidson  gave  up  the  fight  in  despair,  there- 
fore Davidson  was  a  smaller  man.  Such  argument 
takes  no  account  of  the  fact  that  perhaps  of  all  ar- 
tists success  is  easiest  to  the  painter  and  hardest  to 
the  poet  or  writer.  The  painter's  art  is  universal 
and  appeals  to  all  men,  whereas  the  writer's  appeal 
is  limited  to  those  of  his  own  speech.  Whistler  was 
honored  in  France  and  his  work  bought  for  the 
Luxembourg  long  before  he  was  even  taken  seriously 
in  England  or  America.  Davidson  had  no  such  out- 
let: he  had  to  win  in  England  or  lose  altogether. 
Moreover,  thousands  of  people  can  see  beauty  in  a 
picture  for  one  who  loves  poetry,  and  a  picture  can 
be  finished  in  a  week,  whereas  a  poem  of  the  same 
importance  will  take  half  a  year. 

Davidson,  in  my  opinion,  was  quite  as  big  a  man 
as  Whistler,  a  nobler  character,  indeed,  with  just  as 
deep  and  fair  a  mind,  just  as  splendid  an  artistic  en- 
dowment; his  courage,  too,  was  as  high;  but  the  test 
he  was  put  to  was  a  thousandfold  severer.  Whistler 
often  earned  fifty  pounds  in  an  afternoon :  he  lived 
habitually  at  the  rate  of  a  couple  of  thousand  pounds 
a  year,  whereas  Davidson  could  hardly  earn  a  tenth 
of  that  sum.    There  were  always  people  of  great  po- 


158      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

sitlon  who  were  eager  to  ask  Whistler  to  lunch  or 
dinner.  At  forty  he  was  one  of  the  personages  in 
London;  men  pointed  him  out  as  he  passed  in  the 
street,  there  was  a  "legend"  about  him.  Davidson, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  as  little  regarded  as  a  butler 
or  a  bootblack.  One  of  the  rarest  and  most  superb 
flowers  of  genius  of  our  time,  he  was  almost  totally 
neglected:  the  fact  does  not  say  much  for  the  garden 
or  the  gardeners. 


RICHARD  MIDDLETON 
FROM  A  DRAWING  IN  THE  ENGLISH  REVIEW 


RICHARD    MIDDLETON:  AD  MEMORIAM 

IT  was  in  the  autumn  of  1907  that  Edgar  Jepson 
introduced  me  to  Richard  Middleton  in  the 
office  of  Vanity  Fair.  A  big  man  and  perfectly  self- 
possessed,  his  burly  figure,  thick  black  beard  and  fur- 
rowed forehead  made  him  look  ten  years  older  than 
he  was:  five  and  thirty,  at  least,  I  thought  him  till  I 
caught  the  laughing,  boyish  gleam  in  his  grey-blue 
eyes.  He  had  assisted  Jepson  in  the  editing  of  the 
paper  while  I  was  in  America,  and  on  my  return  he 
helped  me  for  some  little  time.  He  was  casual,  cheer- 
fully unpunctual,  careless  rather  than  critical  in  cor- 
recting other  men's  work,  and  these  ordinary  short- 
comings were  somewhat  harassing.  One  day  he  re- 
marked in  the  air,  that  if  he  could  get  paid  for  poetry 
he'd  prefer  writing  to  editing.  I  was  a  little  sur- 
prised: I  had  not  thought  of  him  as  a  poet;  but  we 
soon  came  to  an  arrangement  His  first  verses  sur- 
prised me;  there  was  the  singing  quality  in  them,  a 
happy  ease  of  melody,  a  sureness  and  distinction  of 
phrase  which  proved  that  he  was  indeed  a  poet.  Bet- 
ter still,  his  best  verses  did  not  echo  his  forerunners; 
imitative  cadences  there  were,  of  course ;  a  few  bor- 

159 


i6o      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

rowed  graces;  but  usually  the  song  was  his  own  and 
not  derived — a  true  poet. 

One  day  I  asked  my  assistant  why  there  had  been 
no  poetry  of  Middleton's  in  the  last  week's  impres- 
sion :  had  he  sent  nothing? 

"Oh,  yes,"  was  the  reply,  "he  sent  in  two  or  three 
poems  as  usual,  but  they  were  too  free,  I  was  afraid 
they'd  shock  Mrs.  Grundy,  so  Fm  about  to  return 
them." 

Needless  to  say  that  made  me  eager  to  read  them : 
one  was  "The  Bathing  Boy."  I  published  it 
promptly,  and  told  Middleton  what  I  thought,  that 
it  was  finer  than  Herrick,  with  something  of  unso- 
phisticated beauty  in  It,  pure  loveliness.  After  that 
my  defences  went  down  before  him.  I  published 
whatever  he  sent  me  as  soon  as  I  received  It,  and 
when  he  told  me  he  wanted  to  do  some  stories,  I  was 
more  than  eager  to  see  what  his  prose  would  be  like; 
a  page  of  it  convinced  me;  a  little  too  rhythmic  and 
rounded,  it  had  its  own  charm  and  was  curiously 
characteristic. 

"The  Bathing  Boy"  made  me  want  to  know  Mid- 
dleton better.  I  found  him  deeply  read  In  English, 
and  of  an  astoundingly  sure  judgment  In  all  matters 
of  literature.  His  ripeness  of  mind  excited  my  curi- 
osity, and  I  probed  further.  There  was  In  him  a 
modern  mixture  of  widest  comprehension  with  a 
child's  acceptance  of  vice  and  suffering  and  all  ab- 
normalities.   I  say  a  "child's"  because  it  was  purely 


RICHARD  MIDDLETON  i6i 

curious  and  without  any  tinge  of  ethical  judgment. 
Here  is  a  self-reveaHng  couplet: 

A  human  blossom  glad  for  human  eyes. 
Made  pagan  by  a  child's  serenity. 

At  twenty-five  Middleton  had  come  to  his  full 
growth  and  was  extraordinarily  mature.  In  every 
respect  a  typical  artist,  he  had  no  religious  belief, 
death  seemed  to  him  the  proper  and  only  climax 
to  the  fleeting  show,  but  he  delighted  in  the  pag- 
eantry of  hfe,  and  the  melody  of  words  entranced 
him.  This  visible  world  and  the  passions  of  men  and 
women  were  all  his  care. 

Even  on  the  practical  side  he  was  world-taught, 
if  not  world-wise;  he  had  been  educated  at  St.  Paul's 
School,  and  then  spent  some  years  in  an  insurance 
office  in  the  City:  he  had  given  up  a  large  salary,  he 
said,  to  write  poetry.  As  I  got  to  know  and  like  him, 
I  noticed  that  his  head  was  massive,  his  blue  eyes 
finely  expressive,  his  characteristic  attitude  a  digni- 
fied, somewhat  disdainful  acceptance  of  life's  per- 
verse iniquities. 

When  I  lived  I  sought  no  wings. 

Schemed  no  heaven,  planned  no  hell. 

But,  content  with  little  things. 
Made  an  earth,  and  it  was  well. 

I  am  anxious  not  to  say  one  word  more  than  he 
deserved:  I  never  heard  a  new  thought  from  him: 


1 62      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

I  cannot  call  him,  therefore,  a  brlnger  of  new  light; 
at  the  same  time,  I  scarcely  ever  found  his  judgment 
at  fault:  he  could  have  said  with  Heine — "I  stand 
on  the  topmost  wave  of  all  the  culture  of  my  time," 
and  perhaps  that  is  all  we  can  ask  of  the  poet.  He 
was  not  taken  by  the  popular  idols;  Tennyson,  he 
thought,  had  only  written  half  a  dozen  lyrics,  and 
"Dowson,  you  know,  left  three";  he  regarded 
Browning  as  the  greatest  poet  since  Shakespeare: 
"he  has  given  us  a  greater  body  of  high  poetry,"  he 
would  say,  "than  any  other  English  poet,  though  he 
never  reached  the  magic  of  Keats."  Blake  he  seemed 
to  wince  from;  the  poet  he  praised;  but  the  prophet 
disquieted  him,  disturbed  the  serenity  of  his  pagan, 
sad  acquiescence  in  the  mysteries  of  this  unintelli- 
gible world. 

The  least  one  can  say  of  Middleton  is  that  at  twen- 
ty-five he  stood  as  an  equal  among  the  foremost  men 
of  his  time  in  knowledge  of  thought  and  of  life,  and 
was  among  the  first  of  living  singers  in  natural  en- 
dowment. He  was  a  love-poet,  too,  as  the  greatest 
have  been,  as  Shakespeare  and  Keats,  Goethe  and 
Dante  were,  and  it  was  this  superb  faculty  that  made 
me  hope  great  things  from  him. 

Here  is  a  verse  which  justifies  hope,  I  think: 

Love  played  with  us  beneath  the  laughing  trees. 
We  praised  him  for  his  eyes  and  silver  skin. 
And  for  the  little  teeth  that  shone  within 

His  ruddy  lips;  the  bracken  touched  his  knees. 


RICHARD  MIDDLETON  163 

Earth  wrapped  his  body  in  her  softest  breeze, 
And  through  the  hours  that  held  no  count  of  sin 
We  kept  his  court,  until  above  our  din 

Night  westward  drove  her  glittering  argosies. 

And  this: 

Come,  Death,  and  free  me  from  these  earthly  walls 

That  heaven  may  hold  our  final  festivals 

The  white  stars  trembling  under ! 

I  am  too  small  to  keep  this  passionate  wonder 

Within  my  human  frame:  I  would  be  dead 

That  God  may  be  our  bed. 

I  feel  her  breath  upon  my  eyes,  her  hair 

Falls  on  me  like  a  blessing,  everywhere 

I  hear  her  warm  blood  leaping. 

And  life  it  seems  is  but  a  fitful  sleeping. 

And  we  but  fretful  shades  that  dreamed  before. 

That  love,  and  are  no  more. 

Though  he  can  rise  to  this  height  of  passionate 
utterance,  the  unique  distinction  of  this  book  of  Mid- 
dleton's  is  that  there  is  not  a  bad,  hardly  a  weak 
poem  in  the  whole  volume:  I  know  few  books  of 
which  so  much  can  be  said.  Middleton  at  twenty- 
seven  had  not  only  a  wonderful  lyrical  gift:  but  the 
power  of  self-criticism  of  the  masters. 

Some  critics  have  gone  so  far  as  to  say  that  his 
prose  was  better  than  his  verse;  I  do  not  agree  with 
them;  his  prose  was  always  the  prose  of  a  singer; 


1 64      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

but  he  was  nevertheless  a  story-teller  of  undoubted 
talent.  His  tales  of  boys  are  among  the  best  in  the 
language. 

His  friend,  Mr.  Savage,  tells  us  that  "in  his  last 
year  Middleton  wrote  scarcely  any  poetry  at  all 
.  .  .  he  came  to  love  young  children  and  people 
who  are  simple  and  Icindly  and  not  too  clever  .  .  . 
certainly  he  would  not  have  written  any  more  poems 
like  his  'Irene'  " — poems,  that  is,  of  passion. 

Well,  I  cannot  go  so  far  as  that:  I  think  had  he 
lived  he  would  have  written  both  prose  and  poetry 
in  the  future  as  in  the  past:  he  told  me  more  than 
once  that  he  wrote  stories  because  he  found  them 
more  saleable.  But  the  most  passionate  poems  were 
his  favorites  as  they  were  his  best.  "There  is  no 
demand  for  poetry,"  he  would  say,  in  wonder,  laying 
stress  on  the  word  "demand,"  "no  demand  at  all." 

And  here  we  come  to  the  tragedy  of  Middleton's 
life  as  of  a  great  many  other  lives.  There  is  no  "de- 
mand" in  our  Anglo-Saxon  world  for  high  literary 
or  artistic  work  of  any  kind.  If  it  is  nevertheless 
produced,  it  Is  produced  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  no 
one  wants  it  and  very  few  appreciate  it;  it  must  be 
given,  therefore,  and  not  sold,  as  love  is  given  and 
friendship  and  pity  and  all  high  things.  But  in  spite 
of  all  such  arguments  the  tragedy  remains,  and  the 
gloom  of  it  darkens  all  our  ways. 

Reading  this  volume  of  poems  now  in  the  light  of 
what  happened,  it  is  easy  to  see  the  attraction  which 


RICHARD  MIDDLETON  165 

Death  held  for  Richard  Middleton,  the  abyss  entic- 
ing him  again  and  again.  He  had  lived  and  loved, 
sung  his  songs  and  told  his  stories,  and  the  public 
wouldn't  listen,  didn't  care.  Well,  he  doesn't  care 
much  either:  life  is  only  a  dream,  and  this  dream- 
er's too  easily  wearied  to  struggle,  too  proud  to 
complain.  A  dozen  poems  show  changing  moods 
with  the  same  changeless  refrain: 

Too  tired  to  mock  or  weep 
The  world  that  I  have  missed. 
Love,  in  your  heaven  let  me  sleep 
An  hour  or  two,  before  I  keep 
My  unperturbed  tryst. 

Or  this,  with  its  reminiscence  of  Swinburne: 

Shall  tremble  to  our  laughter. 

While  we  leave  our  tears  to  your  hopeless  years, 
Though  there  be  nothing  after; 
And  while  your  day  uncloses 
Its  lorn  and  tattered  roses. 

We  shall  pluck  the  stars  from  your  prison  bars 
And  bind  celestial  posies. 

Or  this  lovely  verse : 

Gladly  the  rigging  sings. 

But,  oh !  how  glad  are  we. 

Lords  of  the  dreaming  sea. 
And  of  delicious  things;  ' 


1 66      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

We  are  more  rich  than  kings^ 

Or  any  men  that  be. 

While  down  eternity 
We  beat  with  shadowy  wings. 

And  this  finally: 

No  more  than  a  dream  that  sings 

In  the  streets  of  space; 
Ah,  would  that  my  soul  had  wings, 

Or  a  resting-place! 

As  one  turns  the  leaves  one  finds  beauty  every- 
where, on  every  page  joy  in  living  and  in  love,  and 
everywhere  serenity,  the  sad  serenity  of  acquiescence, 
and  now  and  again  the  high  clear  note  that  prom- 
ised so  much  to  those  who  knew  and  loved  him,  and 
how  could  one  help  loving  him  if  one  knew  him? 

For  all  the  rich  and  curious  things 
That  I  have  found  within  my  sleep, 
Are  naught  beside  this  child  that  sings 
Among  the  heather  and  the  sheep; 
And  I,  who  with  expectant  eyes 
Have  fared  across  the  star-lit  foam. 
See  through  my  dreams  a  new  sun  rise 
To  conquer  unachieved  skies. 
And  bring  the  dreamer  home. 

And  this  verse,  perhaps  the  most  characteristic  of 
all,  steeped  as  it  is  in  the  contradictory  essences  of 
life: 


RICHARD  MIDDLETON  167 

I  have  been  free,  and  had  all  heaven  and  hell 
For  prison,  until  my  piteous  hands  grew  sore 
Striking  the  voiceless  walls;  and  now  it  is  well 
Even  though  I  be  a  captive  evermore. 

My  grateful  song  shall  fill  my  hiding-place 
To  find  Eternity  hath  so  sweet  a  face. 


Ah,  the  "piteous  hands"  and  "voiceless  walls!'* 
It  is  over  a  year  now  since  Mr.  Savage  called  on 
me  and  told  me  that  Richard  Middleton  was  dead; 
that  he  had  killed  himself  In  Brussels.  I  stared  at 
him  unable  to  realize  it,  shocked  out  of  thought, 
amazed  and  aching.  I  had  never  thought  of  Mid- 
dleton as  in  distress  or  really  poor:  he  had  often 
spoken  genially  of  his  people,  tenderly  of  a  sister; 
often  when  he  was  hard  up  declared  that  he  would 
have  to  go  home,  "retire  into  country-quarters  for 
my  pocket's  health,"  meeting  poverty  as  It  should  be 
met,  with  good-humor.  In  19 10  I  noticed  that  his 
tone  was  a  little  sharper,  and  busied  myself  for  him 
with  this  editor  and  that,  and  was  relieved  to  see  his 
contributions  appearing  wherever  I  had  any  influ- 
ence, notably  in  the  Academy  and  The  English  Re- 
view. In  the  summer  of  191 1  he  gave  me  his  book 
of  poems  to  get  published,  thinking  I  had  more  influ- 
ence with  publishers  than  I  possessed;  I  told  him  it 
would  be  published  before  the  end  of  the  year,  and 
had  good  hopes  in  the  matter.  I  could  not  conceal 
from  him  that  there  would  be  but  little  money  in  the 


1 68      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

venture,  though  I  kept  the  fact  to  myself  that  the 
most  willing  publisher  I  could  find  wanted  the  cost  of 
the  book  guaranteed.  Had  I  been  asked  as  to  his 
circumstances,  I  should  have  said  that  Middleton 
was  making  his  way  slowly  but  surely  in  the  esteem 
and  affection  of  all  good  readers;  that  a  certain  num- 
ber of  persons  already  counted  him  as  the  most 
promising  of  living  English  poets,  and  that  their  ad- 
miration was  a  forecast  of  fame. 

True,  he  had  been  ailing  all  through  the  summer; 
a  tedious  little  malady,  slow  to  get  cured,  plagued 
him  with  annoyance  and  self-disgust;  true,  he  had 
talked  now  and  then  as  one  talks  to  intimate  friends 
in  moments  of  depression  of  "going  out,"  heart-sick 
for  the  time  being  of  the  Sisyphean  labor;  but  the 
weariness  and  disgust  appeared  to  me  to  be  super- 
ficial; his  smile  came  as  boyish,  gay  as  ever;  his  joy 
in  living,  especially  in  Brussels,  unvexed  by  the 
ghouls  of  English  convention  and  respectability, 
seemed  as  deep  as  the  sea.  I  have  been  told  since 
that  like  Francis  Adams  he  had  tried  already  to  kill 
himself,  had  Indeed  gone  about  for  years  hugging 
the  idea  that  this  door  of  deliverance  was  always 
open  to  him;  but  he  had  not  shown  me  this  soul-side; 
or  perhaps  I  did  not  encourage  his  attempts  at  con- 
fession because  of  my  own  struggle  with  similar  mel- 
ancholy. Whatever  the  explanation  may  be  the 
news  of  his  self-murder  fell  on  me  as  a  shock:  he 
would  not  wait  for  success:  he  had  gone  to  death 


RICHARD  MIDDLETON  169 

in  hatred  of  living:  the  pity  of  it  and  the  unavaihng 
regret  I 

I  was  told  later  of  those  four  days  in  Brussels 
which  he  passed  in  the  cold,  hired  bedroom,  four 
days  in  which  he  forced  himself  to  face  the  Arch- 
Fear  and  conquer  it.  At  the  beginning  he  wrote  a 
post  card  telling  what  he  was  about  to  do,  taking 
farewell  of  his  friend,  in  high  pagan  fashion,  before 
the  long  journey,  and  then  in  that  last  awful  hour, 
with  the  bottle  of  chloroform  before  him,  he  wrote 
across  the  card:  "A  broken  and  a  contrite  spirit 
Thou  wilt  not  despise."  The  awfulness  of  it,  and 
the  pity  deeper  than  tears. 

So  here's  an  end,  I  ask  forgetfulness 

Now  that  my  httle  store  of  hours  is  spent. 
And  heart  to  laugh  upon  my  punishment — 

Dear  God,  what  means  a  poet  more  or  less? 

Well,  It  means  everything  to  the  poet  and  more 
than  is  generally  imagined  to  the  nation  from  which 
he  springs.  Sooner  or  later  all  races  must  learn  that 
their  artists — the  singers  and  painters  and  seers,  the 
priests  of  the  True,  the  Beautiful  and  the  Good — are 
the  rarest  and  most  valuable  of  the  sons  of  men. 
By  the  very  nature  of  their  high  calling,  they  can 
expect  no  reward  from  their  contemporaries;  their 
appeal  is  to  the  future;  their  duty  to  set  the  course 
and  chart  the  unattempted  seas.     More  than  decent 


fi7o      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

provision  for  their  needs,  these  soldiers  of  the  Ideal 
will  not  expect;  but  that  should  be  given  them  by  the 
State  and  such  honor  to  boot  as  may  be  possible. 

Thanks  to  their  purltanism,  as  much  as  to  their 
purblind  practicality,  the  English  are  behind  most 
civilized  races  In  recognizing  this  Imperious  duty. 

A  short  time  ago  John  Davidson  threw  life  up 
In  disgust:  he  couldn't  get  a  decent  living  In  England, 
and  he  was  a  great  poet;  one  of  the  Immortals:  now 
Richard  Middleton  shakes  of!  the  burden  as  too 
heavy.  It  were  better  to  stone  the  prophets  than  to 
starve  them,  better  hate  than  this  ineffable  callous 
contempt. 

Take  It  at  Its  lowest;  these  poets  and  artists  are, 
so  to  speak,  the  fairest  flowers  in  the  garden,  the  only 
perennial  flowers  Indeed;  what  are  the  gardeners 
and  governors  thinking  of  to  allow  the  glories  of  the 
place  to  be  blasted  by  the  biting  wind  of  poverty 
and  neglect?  even  Intelligent  selfishness  would  shield 
and  cherish  them. 

There  Is  another  side  to  this  British  disdain  of 
high  work.     In  the  Daily  Mail  I  read: 

Today  is  the  birthday  of  the  greatest  of  living  English- 
men. Mr.  Chamberlain  is,  indeed,  more  than  that — he  is 
the  most  illustrious  statesman  now  alive  in  the  vrorld;  but 
it  is  as  the  pre-eminent  Englishman  that  his  fellow-coun- 
trymen not  in  these  islands  alone,  but  in  every  province  of 
the  British  Empire,  will  think  of  him. 


RICHARD  MIDDLETON  171 

Canning  was  a  very  famous  Prime  Minister  and 
the  British  authorities  of  the  time  would  no  doubt 
have  smiled  if  they  had  been  told  that  a  little  sur- 
geon's apprentice  was  a  thousand  times  greater  than 
Canning,  and  was  destined  to  be  ten  thousand  times 
more  famous.  Yet  it  was  true :  Canning  today  is 
almost  forgotten,  sinking  rapidly  into  oblivion,  while 
the  name  of  Keats  Is  growing  more  and  more  sa- 
cred: Keats  already  infinitely  greater  than  Canning. 

And  In  fifty  or  a  hundred  years  from  today  the 
names  of  John  Davidson  and  Richard  Middleton 
will  be  much  better  known  and  more  highly  esteemed 
even  by  Members  of  Parliament  and  journalists 
than  the  names  of  Chamberlain  or  Asquith  or  Bal- 
four. It  is  her  best  and  greatest  whom  England 
disdains  and  neglects :  her  second-best  and  third-best 
and  fiftieth-best  are  lauded  to  the  brazen  skies  and 
rewarded  beyond  all  possible  desert. 

When  I  think  of  the  fame  of  Chatterton  and  the 
halo  that  now  surrounds  his  name,  and  the  con- 
demnation which  his  neglect  casts  on  his  age,  I  am 
sure  that  in  the  time  to  come  even  Englishmen  will 
condemn  this  twentieth-century  England  because  of 
the  tragic  fates  of  Davidson  and  Middleton;  for 
even  Richard  Middleton  was  a  far  greater  poet  and 
greater  man  than  Chatterton,  riper  too,  bringing 
achievement  In  his  hands  as  well  as  promise. 

"But  what  can  we  do?"  I  may  be  asked,  and  the 
true  answer  Is  easy  enough.     We  should  cultivate 


172      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

reverence  In  us  for  what  Is  really  great  and  discard 
some  of  the  reverence  all  are  eager  to  express  for 
what  is  not  great,  but  often  the  reverse  of  great. 

Heartily  know 

When  the  half-gods  go 

The  gods  arrive. 

Such  understanding  is  a  plant  of  slowest  growth. 
In  the  meantime,  we  might  begin  to  question  whether 
England  should  spend  not  £1,200  a  year  in  pittances 
to  starving  poets  and  artists  and  their  widows  and 
orphans,  but  £1,200,000  a  year  as  a  start:  it  were 
better  to  lose  a  Dreadnought  than  a  Davidson  or  a 
Middleton. 

England  gives  twelve  hundred  pounds  a  year  as  a 
life  pension  to  every  Cabinet  Minister,  and  that  sum 
is  considered  enough  to  divide  between  all  her  un- 
fortunate poets  and  writers  and  those  nearest  and 
dearest  to  them.  Now  one  John  Davidson  or  one 
Richard  Middleton  is  worth  more — let  the  truth  be 
said  boldly  for  once ! — one  Richard  Middleton  Is  In 
himself  rarer  and  in  his  work  more  valuable  than  all 
the  Cabinet  Ministers  seen  in  England  during  his  life- 
time. 

The  Cabinet  Minister  has  only  to  win  in  the  lim- 
ited competition  of  the  House  of  Commons;  he  has 
only  to  surpass  living  rivals,  the  men  of  his  own  time ; 
but  the  poet  might  be  the  first  of  his  generation  and 


RICHARD  MIDDLETON  173 

yet  deserve  little:  to  win  our  admiration  he  has  to 
measure  himself  with  the  greatest  of  all  the  past  and 
hold  his  place  among  the  Immortals. 

If  one  set  of  Cabinet  Ministers  were  blotted  out 
tomorrow,  who  can  doubt,  knowing  the  high-minded 
patriotism  of  the  parliamentary  office-seeker,  who 
can  doubt  that  another  set  of  Cabinet  Ministers 
would  be  forthcoming  immediately?  And  It  is  just 
as  certain  that  after  a  month  or  a  year,  the  new  set 
would  be  about  as  efficient  or  inefficient  as  their  la- 
mented predecessors.  But  thinkers  and  poets  like 
Davidson  and  MIddleton  are  not  forthcoming  in  this 
profusion.  If  there  is  no  "demand"  for  them  In 
England,  there  is  assuredly  no  "supply"  In  the  usual 
sense  of  that  overworked  word. 

Now  what  is  the  value  of  such  men  to  the  nation? 
What  are  the  true  seers  and  singers  and  prophets 
worth? 

It  is  almost  Impossible  to  put  any  limit  to  their 
value.  I  do  not  hope  to  persuade  Englishmen  or 
Americans  of  this  truth  for  many  a  year  to  come, 
though  I  have  the  highest  warrant  for  it  and  am 
absolutely  convinced  of  the  fact.  Even  now  we  know 
that  the  wisest  and  best  of  mankind  put  the  highest 
estimate  on  these  reporters  and  teachers.  Goethe 
has  said  in  the  most  solemn  way  that  the  purpose  of 
life  itself — "the  final  cause  and  consummation  of  all 
natural  and  human  activity  is  dramatic  poetry." 

And  we  have  higher  and  more  unimpeachable  tes- 


174      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

timony  than  even  Goethe's.  If  one  reads  the  twelfth 
chapter  of  Matthew  carefully,  it  is  plain  that  Jesus 
believed  that  to  take  false  prophets  for  true  and  to 
missee  and  mistreat  the  true  seer  was  the  sin  against 
the  Holy  Spirit,  the  sin  which  would  never  be  for- 
given. We  are  apt  to  regard  this  statement  as 
rhapsodical;  but  I  take  it  as  the  plain  statement  of  an 
eternal  truth,  and  must  set  forth  my  belief  here  as 
best  I  can. 

It  Is  plain  that  the  nations  which  make  amplest 
provision  for  their  singers  and  artists  and  seers  and 
treat  them  with  the  greatest  kindness  and  respect, 
as  France  and  Germany  do,  are  indubitably  the  hap- 
piest of  nations,  the  highest  in  civilization  and  in  so 
far  the  strongest  as  well. 

A  true  spiritual  standard  of  values  is  infinitely 
more  difficult  to  establish  than  an  economic  standard, 
but  it  is  even  more  necessary  to  the  well-being  of 
nations. 

We  all  know  in  these  materialistic  times  that  to 
debase  the  economic  standard  is  to  bring  chaos  into 
life;  but  we  do  not  yet  realize  that  to  show  disre- 
spect to  the  highest  spiritual  standard  is  still  more 
fatal. 

To  allow  seers  and  artists  to  starve  in  a  community 
is  simply  the  incontrovertible  symptom  of  mortal 
disease,  the  sure  proof  that  in  that  community  there 
is  not  enough  reverence  for  high  things,  not  enough 
respect  for  the  powers  and  purposes  of  the  soul  to 


RICHARD  MIDDLETON  175 

keep  the  body-politic  from  decay  and  dissolution. 
Without  a  certain  health  of  spirit  there  is  no  life 
possible  to  man,  contempt  of  the  highest  brings  with 
it  inevitably  the  death  of  the  organism.  Man  does 
not  live  by  bread  alone  or  for  bread. 

Civilization  itself  Is  nothing  but  the  humanization 
of  man  in  society  and  no  class  do  so  much  to  human- 
ize men  as  the  priests  of  the  ideal,  the  seers  and  sing- 
ers and  artists. 

Now  that  industrial  communities,  thanks  to  the 
achieved  lordship  of  natural  forces,  can  produce 
wealth  in  enormous  quantities,  provision  should  be 
made  by  every  State  for  their  men  of  genius.  How 
it  Is  done,  does  not  matter  very  much;  but  It  must 
be  done  and  in  countries  like  England  and  America 
it  will  never  be  done  too  lavishly.  What  shall  be- 
come of  people  who  take  the  children's  bread  and 
give  it  to  the  dogs? 

O  Jerusalem,  Jerusalem,  thou  that  killest  the 
Prophets  and  stonest  them  which  are  sent  unto  thee, 
how  often  would  I  have  gathered  thy  children  to- 
gether even  as  a  hen  gathereth  her  chickens  under 
her  wings,  and  ye  would  not!  Behold  your  house 
is  left  unto  you  desolate. 

The  houses  of  those  who  despise  the  prophets  are 
certain  to  be  left  desolate;  the  sentence  endures  for 
ever,  it  Is  a  part  of  the  nature  of  things  and  not  one 


176      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

jot  or  one  tittle  of  It  shall  pass  away.  Let  England 
take  the  lesson  to  heart. 

Davidson  and  Middleton,  the  one  about  fifty,  the 
other  at  thirty,  threw  away  their  lives  as  not  worth 
living,  as  impossible  to  be  lived,  indeed.  Two  of 
the  finest  spirits  in  England  allowed  practically  to 
starve,  for  that  is  what  it  comes  to:  such  a  catas- 
trophe never  happened  before  even  In  England. 
Under  the  old  hidebound  aristocratic  regime  of  the 
eighteenth  century  young  Chatterton  killed  himself, 
and  his  death  was  regarded  with  a  certain  disquietude 
as  a  portent.  But  Chatterton  was  very  young  and 
stood  alone,  and  the  singularity  of  his  fate  allowed 
one  to  pass  It  over  as  almost  accident.  But  here 
we  have  two  distinguished  men  killing  themselves 
after  they  have  proved  their  powers.  What  does 
It  mean? 

It  means  first  of  all  that  the  present  government 
judged  In  the  most  Important  of  all  functions  Is  the 
worst  government  yet  known  even  in  England; 
judged  by  the  highest  standard  It  must  be  condemned 
pitilessly,  for  the  first  and  highest  object  of  all  gov- 
ernments is  to  save  just  these  extraordinary  talents, 
these  "sports"  from  whom,  as  science  teaches,  all 
progress  comes,  and  to  win  from  them  their  finest 
and  best. 

The  same  government  and  the  same  people  that 
allowed  Davidson  and  Middleton  to  starve,  got  only 
a  half  product  from  Whistler  and  punished  Wilde 


RICHARD  MIDDLETON  177 

with  savage  ferocity,  while  ennobhng  mediocrities 
and  millionaires,  the  dogs  and  the  wolves,  and  wast- 
ing a  thousand  millions  of  pounds  on  the  South 
African  War.     Surely  their  houses  are  Insecure  I 

Fancy  giving  every  Judge  three  thousand  pounds 
a  year  retiring  pension,  and  allotting  Davidson  a 
hundred  and  Middleton  nothing!  The  handwriting 
on  the  wall  is  in  letters  of  fire. 


SIR  RICHARD  BURTON 

RALEIGH,  Sir  Walter  of  that  ilk,  has  always 
seemed  to  me  the  best  representative  of  Eliz- 
abethan England;  for  he  could  speak  and  act  with 
equal  inspiration.  He  was  a  gentleman  and  adven- 
turer, a  courtier  and  explorer,  a  captain  by  sea  and 
land,  equally  at  home  in  Indian  wigwam  or  English 
throne-room.  A  man  of  letters,  too,  master  of  a 
dignified,  courtly  English,  who  could  write  on  uni- 
versal history  to  while  away  the  tedium  of  prison. 
Raleigh  touched  life  at  many  points,  and  always  with 
a  certain  mastery;  yet  his  advice  to  his  son  is  that  of 
a  timorous  prudence.  "Save  money,"  he  says; 
"never  part  with  a  man's  best  friend,"  and  yet  he 
himself  as  a  courtier  could  squander  thousands  of 
pounds  on  new  footgear.  One  of  the  best  "all- 
round"  men  in  English  history  was  Raleigh,  though 
troubled  with  much  serving  which,  however,  one 
feels  came  naturally  to  him;  for  he  was  always  ab- 
solutely sceptical  as  to  any  after-life,  and  so  won  a 
concentrated  and  uncanny  understanding  of  this  life 
and  his  fellow-men.  And  yet  Raleigh  perished  un- 
timely on  a  scaffold,  as  if  to  show  that  no  worldly 
wisdom  can  be  exhaustive,  falling  to  ruin  because  he 

178 


SIR  RICHARD  BURTON  179 

could  not  divine  the  perverse  Impulses  of  a  sensual 
pedant. 

But  In  spite  of  the  vile  Ingratitude  of  James  and 
his  base  betrayal,  aristocratic  England  managed  to 
use  Walter  Raleigh  and  rewarded  him,  on  the  whole, 
handsomely.  He  played  a  great  part  even  In  those 
spacious  days;  was  a  leader  of  men  In  Ireland  In  his 
youth,  a  Captain  of  the  Queen's  Guard  In  manhood; 
and,  ennobled  and  enriched,  held  his  place  always 
among  the  greatest,  and  at  last  died  as  an  enemy 
of  kings,  leaving  behind  him  a  distinguished  name 
and  a  brilliant  page  in  the  history  of  his  country. 

But  what  would  the  England  of  today,  the  Eng- 
land of  the  smug,  uneducated  Philistine  tradesmen, 
make  of  a  Raleigh  if  they  had  one?  The  question 
and  its  answer  may  throw  some  light  on  our  boasted 
"progress"  and  the  astonishingly  selfish  and  self- 
satisfied  present-day  civilization  of  till-and-pill. 

Richard  Burton  I  met  for  the  first  time  In  a  Lon- 
don drawing-room  after  his  return  from  the  Gold 
Coast  sometime  In  the  eighties.  His  reputation  was 
already  world-wide — the  greatest  of  African  explor- 
ers, the  only  European  who  had  mastered  Arabic 
and  Eastern  customs  so  completely  that  he  had 
passed  muster  as  a  Mohammedan  pilgrim  and  had 
preached  in  Mecca  as  a  Mollah.  He  knew  a  dozen 
Indian  languages,  too,  It  was  said,  and  as  many 
more  European,  besides  the  chief  African  dialects; 


i8o      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

was,  in  fine,  an  extraordinary  scholar  and  a  master 
of  English  to  boot,  a  great  writer. 

I  was  exceedingly  curious,  and  very  glad  indeed 
to  meet  this  legendary  hero.  Burton  was  in  con- 
ventional evening  dress,  and  yet,  as  he  swung  round 
to  the  Introduction,  there  was  an  untamed  air  about 
him.  He  was  tall,  about  six  feet  In  height,  with 
broad,  square  shoulders;  he  carried  himself  like  a 
young  man.  In  spite  of  his  sixty  years,  and  was  abrupt 
in  movement.  His  face  was  bronzed  and  scarred, 
and  when  he  wore  a  heavy  moustache  and  no  beard 
he  looked  like  a  prize-fighter;  the  naked,  dark  eyes — 
imperious,  aggressive  eyes,  by  no  means  friendly; 
the  heavy  jaws  and  prominent  hard  chin  gave  him 
a  desperate  air;  but  the  long  beard  which  he  wore 
in  later  life,  concealing  the  chin  and  pursed-out  lips, 
lent  his  face  a  fine,  patriarchal  expression,  subduing 
the  fierce  provocation  of  it  to  a  sort  of  regal  pride 
and  courage.  "Untamed" — that  is  the  word  which 
always  recurs  when  I  think  of  Burton. 

I  was  so  curious  about  so  many  things  in  regard 
to  him  that  I  hesitated  and  fumbled,  and  made  a  bad 
impression  on  him;  we  soon  drifted  apart — I  vexed 
with  myself,  he  loftily  indifferent. 

It  was  Captain  Lovett-Cameron  who  brought  us 
closer  together;  a  typical  sailor  and  good  fellow,  he 
had  been  Burton's  companion  in  Africa  and  had 
sucked  an  idolatrous  admiration  out  of  the  intimacy. 
Burton    was    his    hero;    wiser    than    anyone    else, 


SIR  RICHARD  BURTON  i8i 

stronger,  braver,  more  masterful,  more  adroit;  he 
could  learn  a  new  language  In  a  week,  and  so  forth 
and  so  on — hero-worship  lyrical. 

"A  Bayard  and  an  Admirable  Crichton  In  one," 
I  remarked  scoffingly.  "Human,  too,"  he  replied 
seriously,  "human  and  brave  as  Henry  of  Navarre." 

"Proofs,  proofs,"  I  cried. 

"Proofs  of  courage !"  Cameron  exclaimed,  "every 
African  explorer  lives  by  courage :  every  day  war- 
parties  of  hostile  tribes  have  to  be  charmed  or  awed 
to  friendliness;  rebellious  servants  brought  to  obe- 
dience; wild  animals  killed,  food  provided — all  vicis- 
situdes Burton  handled  as  a  master,  and  the  more 
difficult  and  dangerous  the  situation  the  more  certain 
he  was  to  carry  It  off  triumphantly.  A  great  man, 
I  tell  you,  with  all  sorts  of  qualities  and  powers,  and, 
if  you  followed  his  lead,  the  best  of  'pals.' 

"No  one  would  believe  how  kind  he  Is;  he  nursed 
me  for  six  weeks  through  African  fever — took  care 
of  me  like  a  brother.  You  must  know  Dick  really 
well:  you'll  love  him." 

Thanks  to  Cameron,  Burton  and  I  met  again  and 
dined  together,  and  afterwards  had  a  long  palaver. 
Burton  unbuttoned,  and  talked  as  only  Burton  could 
talk  of  Damascus  and  that  Immemorial  East;  of 
India  and  Its  super-subtle  peoples;  of  Africa  and 
human  life  In  the  raw  today  as  it  was  twenty  thou- 
sand years  ago;  of  Brazil,  too,  and  the  dirty  smear 


1 82      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

of  Portuguese  civilization  polluting  her  silvered  wa- 
terways and  defiling  even  the  immaculate  wild. 

I  can  still  see  his  piercing  eyes,  and  thrill  to  his 
vivid,  pictured  speech;  he  was  irresistible;  as  Cam- 
eron had  said,  "utterly  unconventional."  Being  very 
young,  I  thought  him  too  "bitter,"  almost  as  con- 
temptuous of  his  fellows  as  Carlyle;  I  did  not  then 
realize  how  tragic-cruel  life  is  to  extraordinary  men. 

Burton  was  of  encyclopaedic  reading;  knew  Eng- 
lish poetry  and  prose  astonishingly;  had  a  curious 
liking  for  "sabre-cuts  of  Saxon  speech" — all  such 
words  as  come  hot  from  life's  mint.  Describing 
something,  I  used  the  phrase,  "Frighted  out  of  fear." 
"Fine  that,"  he  cried;  "is  it  yours?  Where  did 
you  get  it?" 

His  ethnological  appetite  for  curious  customs  and 
crimes,  for  everything  singular  and  savage  in  human- 
ity was  insatiable.  A  Western  American  lynching 
yarn  held  him  spell-bound;  a  crime  passionel  in  Paris 
intoxicated  him,  started  him  talking,  transfigured  him 
into  a  magnificent  story-teller,  with  intermingled  ap- 
peals of  pathos  and  rollicking  fun,  camp-fire  effects, 
jets  of  flame  against  the  night. 

His  intellectual  curiosity  was  astonishingly  broad 
and  deep  rather  than  high.  He  would  tell  stories  of 
Indian  philosophy  or  of  perverse  negro  habits  of  lust 
and  cannibalism,  or  would  listen  to  descriptions  of 
Chinese  cruelty  and  Russian  self-mutilation  till  the 
stars  paled  out.     Catholic  in  his   admiration  and 


SIR  RICHARD  BURTON  183 

liking  for  all  greatness,  it  was  the  abnormalities  and 
not  the  divinities  of  men  that  fascinated  him. 

Deep  down  in  him  lay  the  despairing  gloom  of 
utter  disbelief.  "Unaffected  pessimism  and  constitu- 
tional melancholy,"  he  notices,  "strike  deepest  root 
under  the  brightest  skies,"  and  this  pessimistic  melan- 
choly was  as  native  to  Burton  as  to  any  Arab  of 
them  all.  He  was  thinking  of  himself  when  he  wrote 
of  the  Moslem,  "he  cannot  but  sigh  when  contem- 
plating the  sin  and  sorrow,  and  pathos  and  bathos 
of  the  world;  and  feel  the  pity  of  it,  with  its  shifts 
and  changes  ending  in  nothingness,  its  scanty  happi- 
ness, its  copious  misery."  Burton's  laughter,  even, 
deep-chested  as  it  was,  had  in  it  something  of  sad- 
ness. 

At  heart  he  was  regally  generous;  there  was  a 
large  humanity  in  him,  an  unbounded  charity  for  the 
poor  and  helpless;  a  natural  magnanimity,  too;  "an 
unconditional  forgiveness  of  the  direst  injuries"  he 
calls  "the  note  of  the  noble." 

His  love  of  freedom  was  insular  and  curiously 
extravagant,  showing  itself  in  every  smallest  detail. 
"My  wife  makes  we  wear  these  wretched  dress- 
clothes,"  he  cried  one  evening.  "I  hate  'em — a  liv- 
ery of  shame,  shame  of  being  yourself.  Broad 
arrows  would  improve  'em,"  and  the  revolt  of  dis- 
gust flamed  in  his  eyes. 

Like  most  able,  yet  fanatical,  lovers  of  liberty, 
he  preferred  the  tyranny  of  one  to  the  anarchical 


1 84      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

misrule  of  the  many.  "Eastern  despotisms,"  he 
asserts,  "have  arrived  nearer  the  ideal  of  equality 
and  fraternity  than  any  republic  yet  invented." 

"A  master  of  life  and  books,"  I  said  of  him  after- 
wards to  Cameron,  "but  at  bottom  as  tameless  and 
despotic  as  an  Arab  sheikh." 

Two  extracts  from  his  wonderful  Arabian  Nights 
are  needed  to  give  color  to  my  sketch.  I  make  no 
excuse  for  quoting  them,  for  they  are  superexcellent 
English,  and  in  themselves  worthy  of  memory. 
Here  is  a  picture  of  the  desert  which  will  rank  with 
Fromentin's  best: 

Again  I  stood  under  the  diaphanous  skies,  in  air  glori- 
ous as  ether,  whose  every  breath  raises  men's  spirits  like 
sparkling  wine.  Once  more  I  saw  the  evening  star  hang- 
ing like  a  solitaire  from  the  pure  front  of  the  western 
firmament;  and  the  after-glow  transfiguring  and  transform- 
ing, as  by  magic,  the  homely  and  rugged  features  of  the 
scene  into  a  fairyland  lit  with  a  light  which  never  shines 
on  other  soils  or  seas.  Then  would  appear  the  woollen 
tents,  low  and  black,  of  the  true  Badawin,  mere  dots  in 
the  boundless  waste  of  lion-tawny  clays  and  gazelle-brown 
gravels,  and  the  camp-fire  dotting  like  a  glow-worm  the  vil- 
lage centre.  Presently,  sweetened  by  distance,  would  be 
heard  the  wild,  weird  song  of  lads  and  lasses,  driving,  or 
rather  pelting,  through  the  gloaming  their  sheep  and  goats ; 
and  the  measured  chant  of  the  spearsmen  gravely  stalking 
behind  their  charge,  the  camels;  mingled  with  the  bleating 
of  the  flocks  and  the  bellowing  of  the  humpy  herds;  while 
the  reremouse  flittered  overhead  with  his  tiny  shriek,  and 


SIR  RICHARD  BURTON  185 

the  rave  of  the  jackal  resounded  through  deepening  glooms, 
and — most  musical  of  music — the  palm  trees  answered  the 
whispers  of  the  night  breeze  with  the  softest  tones  of  fall- 
ing water. 

And  here  a  Rembrandt  etching  of  Burton  story- 
telling to  Arabs  in  the  desert: 

The  sheikhs  and  "white-beards"  of  the  tribe  gravely 
take  their  places,  sitting  with  outspread  skirts  like  hillocks 
on  the  i^lain,  as  the  Arabs  say,  around  the  camp-fire,  whilst 
I  reward  their  hospitality  and  secure  its  continuance  by 
reading  or  reciting  a  few  pages  of  their  favourite  tales. 
The  women  and  children  stand  motionless  as  silhouettes  out- 
side the  ring;  and  all  are  breathless  with  attention;  they 
seem  to  drink  in  the  words  with  eyes  and  mouth  as  well 
as  with  ears.  The  most  fantastic  flights  of  fancy,  the 
wildest  improbabilities,  the  most  impossible  of  impossibili- 
ties appear  to  them  utterly  natural,  mere  matters  of  every- 
day occurrence.  They  enter  thoroughly  into  each  phase 
of  feeling  touched  upon  by  the  author ;  they  take  a  personal 
pride  in  the  chivalrous  nature  and  knightly  prowess  of 
Tajal-Muluk;  they  are  touched  with  tenderness  by  the  self- 
sacrificing  love  of  Azizah;  their  mouths  water  as  they 
hear  of  heaps  of  untold  gold  given  away  in  largesse  like 
clay;  they  chuckle  with  delight  every  time  a  Kazi  or  a 
Fakir — a  judge  or  a  reverend — is  scurvily  entreated  by 
some  Pantagruelist  of  the  wilderness;  and,  despite  their 
normal  solemnity  and  imi3assibility,  all  roar  with  laughter, 
sometimes  rolling  upon  the  ground  till  the  reader's  gravity 
is  sorely  tried,  at  the  tales  of  the  garrulous  Barber  and 
of  Ali  and  the  Kurdish  sharper.    To  this  magnetizing  mood 


1 86      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

the  sole  exception  is  when  a  Badawi  of  superior  accom- 
plishments, who  sometimes  says  his  prayers,  ejaculates  a 
startling  "Astaghfaru'llah" — I  pray  Allah's  pardon — for 
listening  to  light  mention  of  the  sex  whose  name  is  never 
heard  amongst  the  nobility  of  the  desert. 


Even  when  I  only  knew  Burton  as  a  great  per- 
sonality I  touched  the  tragedy  of  his  life  unwittingly 
more  than  once.  I  had  heard  that  he  had  come 
to  grief  as  Consul  In  Damascus — Jews  there  claim- 
ing to  be  British  subjects  in  order  to  escape  Moham- 
medan justice,  and  when  thwarted  stirring  up  their 
powerful  compatriots  in  London  to  petition  for  his 
recall;  his  superior  at  Beyrout  always  dead  against 
him — eventually  he  was  recalled,  some  said  dis- 
missed. I  felt  sure  he  had  been  in  the  right.  "Won't 
you  tell  me  about  it?"  I  asked  him  one  evening. 

"The  story's  too  long,  too  intricate,"  he  cried. 
"Besides,  the  Foreign  Office  admitted  I  was  right." 

When  I  pressed  for  details  he  replied: 

"Do  you  remember  the  cage  at  Loches,  in  which 
an  ordinary  man  could  not  stand  upright  or  lie  at 
ease,  and  so  was  done  to  death  slowly  by  constraint. 
Places  under  our  Government  today  are  cages  like 
that  to  all  men  above  the  average  size." 

The  English  could  not  use  Burton;  they  could 
maim  him. 

Englishmen  are  so  strangely  Inclined  to  overpraise 
the  men  of  past  times  and  underrate  their  contem- 


SIR  RICHARD  BURTON  187 

porarles  that  many  have  been  astonished  at  my  com- 
paring Burton  with  Raleigh.  But,  in  truth,  both  in 
speech  and  action  Burton  was  the  greater  man.  He 
was  a  more  daring  and  a  more  successful  ex- 
plorer; an  infinitely  better  scholar,  with  intimate 
knowledge  of  a  dozen  worlds  which  Raleigh  knew 
nothing  about,  a  greater  writer,  too,  and  a  more 
dominant,  irresistible  personality.  Young  Lord  Pem- 
broke once  slapped  Raleigh's  face;  no  sane  man 
would  have  thought  of  striking  Burton.  Aristocratic 
Elizabethan  England,  however,  could  honor  Ra- 
leigh and  put  him  to  noble  use,  whereas  Victorian 
England  could  find  no  place  for  Richard  Burton  and 
could  win  no  service  from  him.  Think  of  it !  Bur- 
ton knew  the  Near  East  better  than  any  Westerner 
has  ever  known  it ;  he  was  a  master  of  literary  Arabic 
and  of  the  dialects  spoken  in  Egypt  and  the  Soudan. 
Moreover,  as  he  himself  puts  it  modestly,  "the  acci- 
dents of  my  life,  my  long  dealings  with  Arabs  and 
other  Mohammedans  and  my  familiarity  not  only 
with  their  idiom,  but  with  their  turn  of  thought  and 
with  that  racial  individuality  which  bafiles  descrip- 
tion" made  Burton  an  ideal  ruler  for  a  Mohamme- 
dan people.  He  was  already  employed  under  the 
Foreign  Oflice. 

Notwithstanding  all  this  when  we  took  Egypt  we 
sent  Lord  Dufferin  to  govern  it,  and  tossed  a  small 
consular  post  to  Richard  Burton  as  a  bone  to  a  dog. 
Dufferin  knew  no  Arabic,  and  nothing  about  Egypt. 


1 88      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

Burton  knew  more  than  anyone  else  on  earth  about 
both,  and  was  besides  a  thousand  times  abler  than 
the  chattering,  charming  Irish  peer.  Yet  Dufferin 
Was  preferred  before  him.  Deliberately  I  say  that 
all  England's  mistakes  in  Egypt — and  they  are  as 
numerous  and  as  abominable  as  years  of  needless  war 
have  ever  produced — came  from  this  one  blunder. 
This  sin  England  is  committing  every  day,  the  sin 
of  neglecting  the  able  and  true  man  and  preferring 
to  him  the  unfit  and  second-rate,  and  therefore  negli- 
gible, man;  It  is  the  worst  of  crimes  in  a  ruling  caste, 
the  sin  against  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  sin  once  labelled 
unforgivable.  "No  Immorality,"  said  Napoleon  to 
his  weak  brother,  "like  the  immorality  of  taking  a 
post  you're  not  fitted  for."  No  wonder  Burton 
wrote  that  the  "crass  ignorance"  (of  England) 
"concerning  the  Oriental  peoples  which  should  most 
interest  her,  exposes  her  to  the  contempt  of  Europe 
as  well  as  of  the  Eastern  World."  No  wonder  he 
condemned  "the  regrettable  raids  of  '83-'84,"  and 
"the  miserable  attacks  of  Tokar,  Teb,  and  Tamasi" 
upon  the  "gallant  negroids  who  were  battling  for  the 
holy  cause  of  liberty  and  religion  and  for  escape 
from  Turkish  task-masters  and  Egyptian  tax-gath- 
erers." With  heartfelt  contempt  he  records  the  fact 
that  there  was  "not  an  English  official  in  camp  .  .  . 
capable  of  speaking  Arabic." 

Gladstone    appointed    Dufferin;    Gladstone    sent 
Gordon  to  the  Soudan  at  the  dictation  of  a  journahst 


SIR  RICHARD  BURTON  189 

as  ignorant  as  himself!  Gladstone,  too,  appointed 
Cromer,  and  after  Tokar  and  Teb  we  had  the  atro- 
cious, shameful  revenge  on  the  Mahdi's  remains  and 
the  barbarous  murders  of  Denshawi ;  and  a  thou- 
sand thousand  unknown  tragedies  besides,  all  be- 
cause England's  rulers  are  incapable  of  using  her 
wisest  sons  and  are  determined  to  pin  their  faith 
to  mediocrities — like  choosing  like,  with  penguin 
gravity. 

"England,"  says  Burton,  "has  forgotten,  appar- 
ently, that  she  is  at  present  the  greatest  Mohamme- 
dan empire  in  the  world,  and  in  her  Civil  Service 
examinations  she  insists  on  a  smattering  of  Greek 
and  Latin  rather  than  a  knowledge  of  Arabic." 
Here  is  what  Burton  thought  about  the  English  Civil 
Service;  every  word  of  it  true  still,  and  every  word 
memorable: 

In  our  day,  when  we  live  under  a  despotism  of  the  lower 
"middle-class"  who  can  pardon  anything  but  superiority, 
the  prizes  of  competitive  service  are  monopolized  by  certain 
"pets"  of  the  Mediocratie,  and  prime  favourites  of  that 
jealous  and  potent  majority — the  Mediocrities  who  know 
"no  nonsense  about  merit."  It  is  hard  for  an  outsider  to 
realize  how  perfect  is  the  monopoly  of  commonplace,  and 
to  comprehend  how  fatal  a  stumbling-stone  that  man  sets 
in  the  way  of  his  own  advancement  who  dares  to  think  for 
himself,  or  who  thinks  more  or  who  does  more  than  the  mob 
of  gentlemen-employees  who  know  very  little  and  do  even 
less.    "He  knows  too  much"  is  the  direst  obstacle  to  oflScial 


190      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

advancement  in  England — it  would  be  no  objection  in 
France;  and  in  Germany^  Russia,  and  Italy,  the  three  rising 
Powers  of  Europe,  it  would  be  a  valid  claim  for  promo- 
tion. But,  unfortunately  for  England,  the  rule  and  gov- 
ernment of  the  country  have  long  been,  and  still  are,  in 
the  hands  of  a  corporation,  a  clique,  which  may  be  described 
as  salaried,  permanent  and  irresponsible  clerks,  the  power 
which  administers  behind  the  Minister.  They  rule  and 
misrule;  nor  is  there  one  man  in  a  million  who,  like  the 
late  Mr.  Fawcett,  when  taking  Ministerial  charge,  dares  to 
think  and  act  for  himself  and  to  emancipate  himself  from 
the  ignoble  tyranny  of  "the  office." 

With  all  its  faults  the  English  Civil  Service  is 
better  than  our  Parliamentary  masters.  Like  fish, 
a  State  first  goes  bad  at  the  head.  Burton  used  to 
tell  how  he  came  home  and  offered  all  East  Africa 
to  Lord  Salisbury.  He  had  concluded  treaties  with 
all  the  chiefs;  no  other  Power  was  interested  or 
would  have  objected.  But  Lord  Salisbury  refused 
the  gift.  "Is  Zanzibar  an  island?"  he  exclaimed  in 
wonder,  and  "Is  East  Africa  worth  anything?"  So 
the  Germans  were  allowed  twenty  years  later  to  come 
in  and  cut  "the  wasp's  waist"  and  bar  England's  way 
from  the  Cape  to  Cairo. 

England  wasted  Burton,  left  his  singular  talents 
unused,  and  has  already  paid  millions  of  money, 
to  say  nothing  of  far  more  precious  things  (some 
of  them  beyond  price),  for  her  stupidity,  and  Eng- 
land's account  with  Egypt  is  still  all  on  the  wrong 


SIR  RICHARD  BURTON  191 

side — stands,  indeed,  worse  than  ever,  I  imagine; 
for  Egypt  is  now  bitterly  contemptuous  of  English 
rule.  Egypt  is  a  source  of  weakness  to  England 
therefore,  and  not  a  source  and  fount  of  strength, 
as  she  would  have  been  from  the  beginning  if  the 
old  Parliamentary  rhetor  had  had  eyes  as  well  as 
tongue,  and  had  set  Burton  to  do  the  work  of  teach- 
ing, organizing,  and  guiding  which  your  Dufferins, 
Cromers,  Kitcheners  and  the  rest  are  incapable  even 
of  imagining. 

The  worst  of  it  is  that  Burton  has  left  no  succes- 
sor. Had  he  been  appointed  he  would  have  seen  to 
this,  one  may  be  sure ;  would  have  established  a  great 
school  of  Arabic  learning  in  Cairo,  and  trained  a 
staff  of  Civil  Servants  who  would  have  gladly  ac- 
quired at  least  the  elements  of  their  work — men  who 
would  not  only  have  known  Arabic,  but  the  ablest 
natives,  too,  and  so  have  availed  themselves  of  a 
little  better  knowledge  than  their  own.  But,  alas! 
the  chance  has  been  lost,  and  unless  something  is 
done  soon,  Egypt  will  be  England's  worst  failure, 
worse  even  than  India  or  Ireland. 

But  I  must  return  to  Burton.  I  should  like  to 
tell  of  an  evening  I  spent  once  with  him  when  Lord 
Lytton  was  present.  Lytton  had  been  Viceroy  of 
India,  the  first  and  only  Viceroy  who  ever  under- 
stood his  own  infinite  unfitness  for  the  post. 

"I  only  stayed  in  India,"  he  used  to  say,  "to  pre- 
vent them  sending  out  an  even  worse  man." 


192      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

I  asked  him  afterwards  why  he  didn't  recommend 
Burton  for  the  post;  for  he  knew  something  of 
Burton's  transcendant  quality. 

"They'd  never  send  him,"  he  cried,  with  uncon- 
scious snobbery.  "He's  not  got  the  title  or  the  posi- 
tion; besides,  he'd  be  too  independent.  My  God, 
how  he'd  kick  over  the  traces  and  upset  the  cart!" 

The  eternal  dread  and  dislike  of  genius !  And  yet 
that  very  evening  Burton  had  shown  qualities  of  pru- 
dence and  wisdom  far  beyond  Lytton's  comprehen- 
sion. 

But  I  must  hasten.  I  found  myself  in  Venice  once 
with  time  on  my  hands,  when  I  suddenly  remembered 
that  across  the  sea  at  Trieste  was  a  man  who  would 
always  make  a  meeting  memorable.  I  took  the  next 
steamer  and  called  on  Burton.  I  found  the  desert 
lion  dying  of  the  cage;  dying  of  disappointment  and 
neglect;  dying  because  there  was  no  field  for  the 
exercise  of  his  superlative  abilities;  dying  because  the 
soul  in  him  could  find  nothing  to  live  on  in  Trieste; 
for  in  spite  of  his  talent  for  literature,  in  spite  of 
his  extraordinary  gift  of  speech,  Burton  was  at  bot- 
tom a  man  of  action,  a  great  leader,  a  still  greater 
governor  of  men. 

While  out  walking  one  afternoon  we  stopped  at 
a  little  cafe,  and  I  had  an  object-lesson  in  Burton's 
mastery  of  life.  His  German  was  quite  good,  but 
nothing  like  his  Italian.  He  seemed  to  know  the 
people  of  the  inn  and  every  one  about  by  intuition, 


SIR  RICHARD  BURTON  193 

and  in  a  few  minutes  had  won  their  confidence  and 
admiration.  For  half  an  hour  he  talked  to  a  de- 
lighted audience  in  Dante's  speech,  jewelled  with 
phrases  from  the  great  Florentine  himself.  As  we 
walked  back  to  his  house  he  suddenly  cried  to  me: 

"Make  some  excuse  and  take  me  out  tonight;  if 
I  don't  get  out  I  shall  go  mad.     .     .     ." 

We  had  a  great  night — Burton  giving  pictures  of 
his  own  life;  telling  of  his  youth  in  the  Indian  Army 
when  he  wandered  about  among  the  natives  dis- 
guised as  a  native  (I  have  always  thought  of  him 
as  the  original  of  Kipling's  "Strickland").  His  fel- 
low-officers, of  course,  hated  his  superiority:  called 
him  in  derision  "the  white  nigger";  Burton  laughed 
at  it  all,  fully  compensated,  he  said,  for  their  hatred 
by  the  love  and  admiration  of  Sir  Charles  Napier 
{Peccavi,  "I  have  Scinde,"  Napier),  hero  recogniz- 
ing hero.  It  was  to  Napier,  and  at  Napier's  request, 
that  he  sent  the  famous  "report"  which,  falling  into 
secretarial  hands,  put  an  end  to  any  chance  of  Bur- 
ton's advancement  in  India — the  tragedy  again  and 
again  repeated  of  a  great  life  maimed  and  marred 
by  envious,  eyeless  mediocrities.  What  might  have 
been,  what  would  have  been  had  he  been  given  power 
— a  new  earth  if  not  a  new  heaven — the  theme  of  his 
Inspired  Report. 

I  got  him  to  talk,  too,  about  The  Scented  Garden, 
which  he  had  been  working  at  for  some  time.     Lady 


194      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

Burton  afterwards  burnt  this  book,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered, together  with  his  priceless  diaries,  out  of  sheer 
prudery.  He  told  me  (what  I  had  already  guessed) 
that  the  freedom  of  speech  he  used,  he  used  deliber- 
ately, not  to  shock  England,  but  to  teach  England 
that  only  by  absolute  freedom  of  speech  and  thought 
could  she  ever  come  to  be  worthy  of  her  heritage. 

"But  Em  afraid  it's  too  late,"  he  added;  "Eng- 
land's going  to  some  great  defeat;  she's  wedded  to 
lies  and  mediocrities."  .  .  .  He  got  bitter 
again,  and  I  wished  to  turn  his  thoughts. 

"Which  would  you  really  have  preferred  to  be," 
I  probed,  "Viceroy  of  India  or  Consul-General  of 
Egypt?" 

"Egypt,  Egypt!"  he  cried,  starting  up,  "Egypt! 
In  India  I  should  have  had  the  English  Civil  Serv- 
ants to  deal  with — the  Jangali,  or  savages,  as  their 
Hindu  fellow-subjects  call  them — and  English  preju- 
dices, English  formalities,  English  stupidity,  Eng- 
lish ignorance.  They  would  have  killed  me  in  India, 
thwarted  me,  fought  me,  intrigued  against  me,  mur- 
dered me.  But  in  Egypt  I  could  have  made  my  own 
Civil  servants,  picked  them  out,  and  trained  them. 
I  could  have  had  natives,  too,  to  help.  Ah,  what 
a  chance! 

"I  know  Arabic  better  than  I  know  Hindu.  Arabic 
Is  my  native  tongue;  I  know  it  as  well  as  I  know 
English.     I  know  the  Arab  nature.     The   Mahdi 


SIR  RICHARD  BURTON  195 

business  could  have  been  settled  without  striking  a 
blow.  If  Gordon  had  known  Arabic  well,  spoken 
it  as  a  master,  he  would  have  won  the  Mahdi  to 
friendship.  To  govern  well  you  must  know  a  people 
— know  their  feelings,  love  their  dreams  and  aspira- 
tions. What  did  Dufferin  know  of  Egj'pt?  Poor 
Dufferin,  what  did  he  even  know  of  Dufferin?  And 
Cromer's  devoid  even  of  Dufferin's  amiability!" 

The  cold  words  do  him  wrong,  give  no  hint  of 
the  flame  and  force  of  his  disappointment;  but  I  can 
never  forget  the  bitter  sadness  of  it:  "England 
finds  nothing  for  me  to  do,  makes  me  an  office-boy, 
exiles  me  here  on  a  pittance."     The  caged  lion  I 

I  have  always  thought  that  these  two  men,  Carlyle 
and  Burton,  were  the  two  greatest  governors  ever 
given  to  England.  The  one  for  England  herself,  and 
as  an  example  to  the  world  of  the  way  to  turn  a 
feudal,  chivalrous  State  into  a  great  modern  indus- 
trial State;  the  other  the  best  possible  governor  of 
Mohammedan  peoples — two  more  prophets  whom 
England  did  not  stone,  did  not  even  take  the  trouble 
to  listen  to.  She  is  still  paying,  as  I  have  said,  some- 
what dearly  for  her  adders'  ears  and  must  yet  pay 
still  more  heavily. 

I  have  found  fault  with  Carlyle  because  he  was  a 
Puritan,  deaf  to  music,  blind  to  beauty.  Burton  went 
to  the  other  extreme :  he  was  a  sensualist  of  extrava- 
gant appetite  learned  in  every  Eastern  and  savage 


196      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

vice.  His  coarse,  heavy,  protruding  lips  were  to  me 
sufficient  explanation  of  the  pornographic  learning 
of  his  Arabian  Nights.  And  when  age  came  upon 
him;  though  a  quarter  of  what  he  was  accustomed 
to  eat  in  his  prime  would  have  kept  him  in  perfect 
health,  he  yielded  to  the  habitual  desire  and  suffered 
agonies  with  indigestion,  dying,  indeed,  in  a  fit  of 
dyspepsia  brought  on  by  over-eating.  And  with 
these  untamed  appetites  and  desires  he  was  peculiarly 
sceptical  and  practical;  his  curiosity  all  limited  to 
this  world,  which  accounts  to  me  for  his  infernal 
pedantry.  He  never  seemed  to  realize  that  wisdom 
has  nothing  to  do  with  knowledge,  literature  nothing 
to  do  with  learning.  Knowledge  and  learning,  facts, 
are  but  the  raw  food  of  experience,  and  literature  is 
concerned  only  with  experience  itself.  A  child  of 
the  mystical  East,  a  master  of  that  Semitic  thought 
which  has  produced  the  greatest  religions.  Burton 
was  astoundingly  matter-of-fact.  There  was  no 
touch  of  the  visionary  in  him — the  curious  analogies 
everywhere  discoyerable  in  things  disparate,  the 
chemical  reactions  of  passion,  the  astounding  agree- 
ment between  mathematical  formul£e  and  the  laws 
of  love  and  hatred,  the  myriad  provoking  hints,  like 
eyes  glinting  through  a  veil,  that  tempt  the  poet  to 
dreaming,  the  artist  to  belief,  were  all  lost  on  Bur- 
ton. He  was  a  master  of  this  life  and  cared  nothing 
for  any  other;  his  disbelief  was  characteristically 
bold  and  emphatic.    He  wrote : 


SIR  RICHARD  BURTON  197 

The  shivered  clock  again  shall  strike^  the  broken  reed  shall 

pipe  again. 
But  we,  we  die,  and  Death  is  one,  the  doom  of  Brutes,  the 

doom  of  Men. 

But,  with  all  his  limitations  and  all  his  shortcomings, 
Burton's  place  was  an  Eastern  throne  and  not  the 
ignoble  routine  of  a  petty  Consular  office. 

At  length  the  good  hour  came;  he  died. 

As  he  had  lived  alone: 
He  was  not  missed  from  the  desert  wide. 

Perhaps  he  was  found  at  the  Throne. 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

THE  publication  of  Meredith's  letters  has  been,  a 
literary  event:  they  appear  to  have  surprised 
the  general  public  and  touched  it  to  unwonted  regret. 
In  a  peculiar  way,  they  have  set  the  seal  upon  a  repu- 
tation which  has  been  growing  now  for  over  sixty 
years,  since  the  appearance  indeed  of  his  first  novels 
and  poems.  Fifty  years  ago  Carlyle  noticed  his 
work,  and  his  fame  widened  with  every  book,  took 
on  a  ring,  so  to  speak,  every  year,  and  grew  slowly 
as  trees  grow  which  are  destined  to  last  for  centuries. 
In  the  eighties,  when  Meredith  was  well  over  fifty, 
the  younger  generation  began  to  speak  of  him  with 
reverence;  to  us  he  stood  with  Browning  and  Swin- 
burne among  the  Immortals.  But  Browning  lived 
a  life  apart  and  held  himself  aloof  from  men  of 
letters  and  journalists;  while  Swinburne  showed 
every  now  and  then  a  vehemence  of  anger  and  a 
deplorable  extravagance  of  speech  which  made  one 
almost  ashamed  of  even  his  generous  and  clear- 
sighted judgments.  Those  of  us  who  had  the  honor 
and  the  delight  of  knowing  Meredith  personally  had 
seldom  anything  to  forgive  him;  we  knew  that  he 
was  not  only  one  of  the  greatest  of  Enghsh  letter- 

198 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  199 

writers,  not  only  a  splendid  creative  artist  and  poet, 
but  something  more  even  than  that;  a  most  noble 
and  Inspiring  personality,  perhaps  the  widest  and 
deepest  mind  born  In  England  since  Blake. 

I  could  give  many  Instances  of  his  generosity  and 
sympathy,  the  eagerness  with  which  he  championed 
any  cause  or  person  that  seemed  to  him  worthy,  or 
merely  In  need  of  help;  but  I  must  content  myself 
with  one,  and  thus  pay  a  personal  debt. 

Shortly  after  I  was  appointed  editor  of  The  Fort- 
nightly I  wrote  my  first  short  stories,  and,  as  some 
friends  spoke  well  of  them,  I  showed  them  to  Fred- 
eric Chapman,  the  managing  director  of  Chapman 
and  Hall,  who  controlled  the  review.  He  liked  them 
and  wished  me  to  publish  them :  accordingly,  I  pub- 
lished The  Modern  Idyll  In  The  Fortnightly.  It 
was  bitterly  attacked  by  the  unco'  guld:  the  Rev. 
Newman  Hall  wrote  a  furious  letter  about  It,  and, 
to  my  amazement,  The  Spectator,  for  which  I  had 
written  for  years,  joined  In  the  hue  and  cry  with 
peculiar  malevolence.  The  result  was  that  the  direc- 
tors of  Chapman  and  Hall  met  and  Instructed  me 
not  to  Insert  any  more  of  my  stories  In  the  review. 
I  saw  them,  and,  without  giving  Frederic  Chapman 
away,  told  them  what  I  thought  of  their  literary 
judgment  and  handed  them  my  resignation.  Frederic 
Chapman  begged  me  to  reconsider  the  matter,  but 
I  was  obstinate.  A  day  or  two  afterwards  Chapman 
came  to  me  and  told  me  that  Meredith  was  In  his 


200      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

room,  and  that  he  was  praising  my  story  enthusias- 
tically:    "Would  I  come  across  and  see  him?" 

I  was  naturally  eager  to  see  the  king  of  contem- 
porary writers,  and  jumped  at  the  opportunity.  As 
Meredith  got  up  from  the  arm-chair  to  greet  me, 
I  was  astonished  by  the  Greek  beauty  of  his  face 
set  off  by  wavy  silver  hair  and  the  extraordinary 
vivacity  of  ever-changing  expression,  astonished,  too, 
by  the  high,  loud  voice  which  he  used  in  ordinary 
conversation,  and  by  the  quick-glancing  eyes  which 
never  seemed  to  rest  for  a  moment  on  any  object,  but 
flitted  about  curiously,  like  a  child's.  The  bright 
quick  eyes  seemed  to  explain  Meredith's  style  to  me, 
and  give  the  key  to  his  mind.  The  good  fairies  had 
dowered  this  man  at  birth  with  a  profusion  of  con- 
tradictory gifts — beauty  of  face  and  strength  of 
body  and  piercing  intelligence.  They  had  given  him 
artistic  perceptions  as  well  as  high  courage;  generos- 
ity and  sweetness  of  soul  together  with  great  self- 
control — all  the  enthusiasms  and  idealisms,  and  yet 
both  feet  steadfast  on  Mother  Earth  in  excellent  bal- 
ance. But  the  bad  fairy,  who  couldn't  prevent  him 
seeing  everything,  could  hinder  him  from  dwelling 
patiently  on  insignificant  things,  or  what  seemed  in- 
significant to  him ;  the  eyes  flitted  hither  and  thither 
butterfly  fashion,  and  the  style  danced  about  for  van- 
ity's sake  to  keep  the  eyes  company. 

But  at  the  moment  I  was  more  impressed  by  the 
kindly  humanity  of  the  man  than  even  by  his  genius. 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  201 

As  soon  as  he  heard  what  had  happened  he  declared 
he  would  see  the  directors  himself;  "Perhaps  they 
will  listen  to  me,"  he  cried,  with  friendliest  interest; 
"they  mustn't  be  allowed  to  stand  in  our  light,"  he 
added,  with  a  humorous  twinkle.  Frederic  Chapman 
told  me  afterwards  that  Meredith  had  come  up  to 
London  on  purpose  to  speak  for  me  to  the  directors, 
and  he  soon  induced  them  to  recall  their  insulting 
notice. 

I  am  proud  to  put  on  record  this  instance  of  Mere- 
dith's kindness  to  an  unknown  stranger,  for  such 
human  sympathy  is  rare  Indeed  among  English  writ- 
ers. So  far  as  I  know,  Meredith  was  the  only  man 
of  his  generation  who  took  the  high  responsibilities 
of  genius  seriously:  an  uncrowned  king,  he  never 
forgot  that  sympathetic  kindness  to  juniors  and  in- 
feriors was  a  duty  of  his  position. 

I  could  fill  a  book  with  instances  of  his  generous 
appreciations  and  helpful  kindness;  but  I  cannot  re- 
sist the  temptation  to  reproduce  here  the  conclusion 
of  one  of  his  letters  to  me  just  to  give  an  idea  of 
the  familiar  charm  and  sweet-natured  tact  of  his 
friendship.  He  had  written  asking  me  why  I  hadn't 
brought  out  a  book  which  had  been  announced  ?  The 
public,  I  replied,  didn't  care  for  my  work,  and  the 
illiterate  prudery  of  the  Press  was  revolting.  He 
wrote  at  once  calling  on  me  to  pay  no  attention  to 
the  malice  of  journalists  or  the  religiosity  of  the 


202      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

feeble-minded.    The  letter  was  in  the  strain  of  Mary 
Coleridge's  famous  verse: 

Narrow  not  thy  walk  to  keep 
Pace  with  those  who,  half  asleep. 
Judge  thee  now.    .    .    . 

and  it  ended  with  the   encouragement  of  his  own 
example : 

"I  am  an  old  offender  before  the  public.  There  were 
meetings  at  Book  Clubs  headed  by  clergy  over  the  country 
to  denounce  R.  Feverel  as  an  immoral  production.  The 
good  beast  is  doubtful  of  the  smell  of  me  still,  and,  as  I 
am  not  guided  by  his  opinion,  you  must  take  the  fact  to 
weigh  in  the  scales  against  my  judgment. 

"Yours  ever, 

"George  Meredith." 

Again  and  again  he  cheered  younger  ones  to  the 
work,  and  whenever  anybody  wrote  to  him  he  an- 
swered at  once,  and  always  with  the  enthusiasm  that 
regards  difficulties  as  rungs  of  the  ladder.  One 
might  have  thought  he  had  nothing  else  to  do  but 
play  good  Samaritan  and  encourage  the  faint- 
hearted. 

His  own  courage  was  of  the  finest.  In  1896  he 
wrote  to  me  that  he  had  come  up  to  London  for  an 
operation.  A  foolish  fear  seized  me:  I  realized 
what  it  would  mean  to  lose  him.     I  called  at  once 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  203 

and  found  him  In  bed  laughing  and  chatting  with 
friends  who  had  come  to  see  him.  Evidently  he 
was  ready  and  willing  to  face  the  worst.  No 
need  even  for  resolution:  he  had  accustomed 
himself  to  look  upon  the  Arch-Fear  as  a  friend. 
Nothing  finer  could  be  Imagined  or  wished :  "Science 
has  abolished  pain,"  he  said  gaily,  "and  with  pain 
even  the  need  of  steeling  oneself:  the  doctors  have 
made  the  ford  easy,  we  can't  even  feel  the  chill  of 
the  water."  It  was  good  to  meet  the  old  hero  and 
find  him  superior  to  his  fate,  light-hearted  indeed, 
knowing  that,  whatever  happened,  he  had  fought  a 
great  fight  and  won  many  a  victory. 

Now  and  again,  however,  little  disappointments 
came  to  show  me  he  was  human. 

Talking  one  day  about  his  French  Odes,  which 
I  admired,  "Aylwin"  was  mentioned,  and  to  my 
amazement  he  praised  parts  of  it.  That  he  should 
even  have  been  able  to  read  the  drivel  made  me 
gasp:  but  Theodore  Watts-Dunton  as  a  writer  for 
The  Atheuceiim  had  a  certain  influence :  the  question 
imposed  itself:  did  Meredith  care  so  much  for  popu- 
larity? Yet  I  had  only  to  get  on  a  larger  subject 
with  him  to  find  at  once  the  imperial  sweep  of  mind, 
like  a  broad  landscape  on  the  downs  when  you  can 
see  over  the  hills  the  wide  expanse  of  sea  meeting 
the  reach  of  sky.  It  is  curious  that  the  little  weak- 
nesses, even  the  faults  of  those  we  love,  do  not  touch 
our  affection  or  even  diminish  our  reverence.    Often 


204      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

Indeed  they  make  the  character  dearer  to  us,  more 
human,  more  lovable. 

But  there  are  differences  of  opinion  which  go  deep- 
er, and  after  ten  years'  friendship  I  was  at  length 
to  meet  one  of  these  In  Meredith. 

The  incident  may  be  put  on  record,  though  It 
stands  alone,  because  every  close  reader  of  his  works, 
and  especially  of  his  poetry,  will  admit  that  It  was 
eminently  characteristic.  All  the  world  knows  that 
Oscar  Wilde  was  sentenced  to  two  years'  imprison- 
ment with  hard  labor;  but  very  few  have  heard  that 
this  punishment  had  been  previously  condemned  as 
Inhuman  by  a  Royal  Commission.  Acting  on  the  sug- 
gestion of  the  Commission  that  the  frightful  sen- 
tence should  always  be  mitigated  I  got  up  a  petition 
for  the  remission  of  part  of  the  term.  I  was  In- 
formed on  good  authority  that  If  Meredith  headed 
the  petition  and  I  could  get  five  or  six  other  men 
of  letters  to  support  the  request,  the  Government 
would  grant  It  without  further  ado.  I  jumped  at 
the  chance,  feeling  sure  I  had  only  to  ask  Meredith 
to  get  his  consent;  but  to  my  astonishment  he  replied 
that  he  couldn't  do  as  I  wished,  and  when  I  pressed 
him  to  let  me  see  him  on  the  matter,  he  answered 
that  he  would  rather  not  meet  me  for  such  a  purpose 
as  his  mind  was  made  up.  I  was  simply  dumb- 
founded, and  at  a  complete  loss.  I  knew  it  was  not 
courage  that  was  lacking,  or  want  of  imagination: 
what  could  be  the  reason?  When  I  turned  elsewhere 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  205 

and  failed  I  was  not  astonished;  how  could  I  be 
angry  with  the  sheep  when  the  bell-wether  had  played 
false. 

A  little  later  I  made  it  my  business  to  meet  Mere- 
dith as  If  by  chance  and  have  it  out  with  him.  To 
my  amazement  he  defended  his  want  of  sympathy: 
abnormal  sensuality  In  a  leader  of  men,  he  said,  was 
a  crime,  and  should  be  punished  with  severity.  Again 
and  again  he  repeated  that  all  greatness  was  based 
on  morality,  that  immorality  and  a  fortiori,  abnor- 
mal immorality  was  a  proof  of  degeneracy;  Wilde 
was  "an  arrested  development" ;  he  became  emphatic, 
loud,  rhetorical.  On  the  other  hand,  I  argued  that 
abnormal  vice  was  a  monomania  and  should  be 
treated  as  a  mental  aberration:  It  wasn't  catching; 
one  didn't  punish  cripples  and  so  on.  He  wouldn't 
listen;  as  he  had  said  his  mind  was  made  up,  and  at 
length  I  had  to  accept  the  fact  that  a  hero  could 
allow  the  maimed  and  deformed  on  his  own  side  to 
be  tortured  by  the  enemy. 

It  has  since  been  pointed  out  to  me  that  Meredith's 
poems  discover  the  same  relentless,  stoic  severity; 
but  the  explanation  did  not  interest  me  greatly. 
Meredith  as  a  leader  of  thought  and  men  died  for 
me  then,  and  my  sorrow  was  embittered  with  im- 
patient disdain.  The  foremost  Englishman  after 
twenty  centuries  had  not  climbed  to  the  Christ  height. 

There  Is  something  to  be  said  In  his  excuse ;  though 
not  much.    He  had  a  poor  opinion  of  Oscar  Wilde's 


2o6      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

writings,  he  would  not  hear  of  placing  him  in  the 
front  rank;  he  was  a  poseur  he  said.  Wilde  had 
laughed  at  his  obscurity  and  tortuous  style  in  one 
of  his  Essays;  but  I  was  convinced  that  that  circum- 
stance had  nothing  consciously  to  do  with  Meredith's 
attitude.  Meredith  was  so  noble  and  lovable  that 
no  mean  suspicion  could  attach  to  his  misjudging. 

The  truth  is,  he  had  scant  appreciation  for 
Wilde's  extraordinary  sweetness  of  nature  and  ex- 
quisite sunny  humor;  probably  he  had  never  known 
him  at  all  intimately.  But  to  me  the  fact  remained 
that  he  had  defended  the  barbarous  punishment  of 
a  man  of  genius  when  punishment  was  wholly  in- 
defensible. 

For  some  years  I  had  no  further  communication 
with  him :  I  could  not  even  write  to  him :  I  should 
have  had  to  probe  the  wound:  why  did  he  act  so? 
How  could  he?  I  couldn't  think  of  "the  great  re- 
fusal" dispassionately. 

A  little  later  Meredith  gave  me  another  shock  of 
surprise  and  disappointment,  followed  by  just  as  im- 
patient and  certain  condemnation.  In  the  South 
African  dispute  he  persisted  in  saying  that  there 
were  faults  on  both  sides.  While  admitting  that 
the  war  was  unnecessary  and  that  the  British  were 
chiefly  to  blame,  he  proposed  coolly  that  Johannes- 
burg and  the  mines  should  be  taken  from  the  Boers. 
The  other  day  when  the  Hon.  Alfred  Lyttleton  died, 
it  was  said  of  him  in  eulogy  that  he  was  an  ideal 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  207 

Englishman,  who  always  held  with  "his  own  people, 
right  or  wrong."  It  really  seems  as  if  Englishmen 
are  fated  to  be  insular,  provincial  even,  whenever 
their  own  country  is  concerned.  Meredith  saw  cer- 
tain virtues  of  stubborn  manfulness  in  the  Boers; 
but  he  had  no  right  notion  of  them  in  relation  to  the 
British  emigrants  and  the  future  of  South  Africa,  no 
realization  of  the  fact  that  foreign  miners  can  hardly 
be  regarded  as  bona  fide  settlers,  and  that  German 
Jew  financiers  are  not  apt  to  be  good  rulers. 

He  took  it  for  granted  that  the  Boers  maltreated 
the  KafErs,  and  that  their  civilization  was  far  lower 
than  ours.  When  I  asked  him  to  protest  against  the 
dreadful  mortality  in  the  Concentration  Camps,  he 
told  me  that  he  didn't  believe  the  mortality  could 
be  lessened.  He  protested,  it  is  true,  in  the  Daily 
Nezvs  and  elsewhere  against  some  of  the  worst  ex- 
cesses of  the  British  during  the  war;  but  he  seemed 
to  have  no  idea  that  the  burning  of  peaceable  farm- 
houses was  barbarous,  and  that  no  civilized  people 
except  the  British  had  been  guilty  of  such  a  crime 
In  the  last  hundred  years.  The  awful  mortality  In 
the  Concentration  Camps  cannot  be  explained  away, 
and  the  whole  policy  remains  as  a  blot  on  the  English 
name  for  ever. 

But  It  was  Impossible  to  be  angry  with  Meredith 
for  long.  His  faults  were  so  manifestly  faults  due 
to  his  birth  and  training  that  one  simply  had  to  for- 
give and  forget  them.     It  is  almost  Impossible  for 


2o8      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

an  Englishman  to  reach  the  Impartiality  frequently- 
shown  by  distinguished  men  of  other  races.  It  may, 
of  course,  be  argued  that  the  strength  and  success 
of  the  English  come  from  just  this  inability  to  see  a 
foreigner's  point  of  view  and  sympathize  with  it. 
But  the  Romans  tried  patriotism  instead  of  human- 
ity and  found  it  fall  them,  and  It  may  be  that  the 
British  will  yet  come  to  grief  for  the  same  reason. 

However  that  may  be,  the  fact  is  that  In  the  South 
African  War  no  Englishmen  of  note,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  and  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw,  were  at  all  able  to  judge  events  impartially, 
and  they  were  Imperfectly  acquainted  with  the  Boers 
and  their  desires. 

It  Is  scarcely  possible  to  hope  that  any  man  will 
always  rise  superior  to  the  prejudices  of  his  race  and 
upbringing.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten  Meredith  stood 
for  the  right,  even  when  the  right  was  unpopular. 

At  the  very  commencement  of  the  agitation  for 
Women's  Suffrage  he  struck  In  for  the  women  and 
their  demands  in  whole-hearted  fashion.  His  short- 
comings even  were  not  shortcomings  of  character  or 
of  courage. 

About  this  time,  at  seventy-four  or  five  years  of 
age,  he  began  to  talk  as  If  his  work  were  done  and 
the  account  settled.  But  later  still  I  met  him  again; 
and  found  his  mind  as  vivacious  as  it  had  been 
twenty  years  before.  In  particular  I  remember  one 
afternoon  above  his  house  on  Box  Hill  when  he  was 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  209 

being  driven  in  his  little  donkey-chair.  I  went  over 
and  spoke  to  him  and  found  him  the  same  as  ever, 
as  friendly  and  clear-sighted  and  affectionate  as  in 
the  earlier  days. 

His  letters  show  one  that  up  to  the  very  end 
his  intellect  was  as  keen,  his  perception  as  fine,  and 
his  judgment  as  sure  as  ever.  They  contain,  indeed, 
the  finest  criticism  in  the  language.  Here  is  how 
he  ranks  himself : 

Men  to  whom  I  bow  my  head  (Shakespeare,  Goethe,  and, 
in  their  way,  Moliere,  Cervantes)  are  Realists  au  fond. 
But  they  have  the  broad  arms  of  Idealism  at  command. 
They  give  us  Earth;  but  it  is  earth  with  an  atmosphere. 

And  here  is  Victor  Hugo  judged  by  a  master: 

On  re-reading  V.  Hugo's  Les  Cymballers  du  Roi  I  am 
confirmed  in  a  cloyed  sensation  I  first  experienced.  The 
alliteration  is  really  so  persistent  that  the  ears  feel  as  if 
they  had  been  horribly  drummed  on.  Power  of  narrative, 
I  see.  Mimetic  power  of  a  wonderful  kind  and  flow  of 
verse;  also  extraordinary.  I  am  not  touched  by  any 
new  music  in  it.  I  do  not  find  any  comprehension  of 
human  nature,  or  observation,  or  sympathy  with  it.  I  per- 
ceive none  of  the  subtleties,  deep  but  unobtrusive,  that 
show  that  a  mind  has  travelled.  Great  windy  phrases,  and 
what  I  must  term  (for  they  so  hit  my  sense)  encaustic 
imageries,  do  not  satisfy  me  any  longer,  though  I  remem- 
ber a  period  when  they  did.    .    .    . 

The  article  on  the  "Travailleurs  de  la  Mer"  is  Morley's. 


2IO      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

I  think  it  scarcely  does  justice  to  the  miraculous  descriptive 
power.  The  Storm  is  amazing:  I  have  never  read  any- 
thing like  it.  It  is  next  to  Nature  in  force  and  vividness. 
Hugo  rolls  the  sea  and  sweeps  the  heavens;  the  elements 
are  in  his  hands.  He  is  the  largest  son  of  his  mother 
earth  in  this  time  present.  Magnificent  in  conception,  un- 
surpassed— leagues  beyond  us  all — in  execution.  Not  (nur 
Schade !)  a  philosopher.  There's  the  pity.  With  a  philo- 
sophic brain,  as  well  as  his  marvellous  poetic  energy,  he 
would  stand  in  the  front  rank  of  glorious  men  for  ever. 

This  word  about  English  prose  hits  the  centre : 

The  prose  in  Shakespeare  and  in  Congreve  is  perfect. 
Apart  from  drama.  Swift  is  a  great  exemplar ;  Bolingbroke, 
and  in  his  mild  tea-table  way,  Addison,  follow.  Johnson 
and  Macaulay  wielded  bludgeons ;  they  had  not  the  strength 
that  can  be  supple. 

And  the  masters  of  his  own  time  are  judged  from 
the  same  height: 

I  can  hardly  say  I  think  Tennyson  deserves  well  of  us; 
he  is  a  real  singer,  and  he  sings  this  mild  fluency  to  this 
great  length.  Malory's  Morte  d' Arthur  is  preferable. 
Fancy  one  affecting  the  great  poet  and  giving  himself 
up  (in  our  days — he  must  have  lost  the  key  of  them)  to 
such  dandiacal  fluting.  .  .  .  The  praises  of  the  book  shut 
me  away  from  my  fellows.  To  be  sure,  there's  the  mag- 
nificent "Lucretius." 

I  return  Ruskin's  letter,  a  characteristic  one.  It  is  the 
spirituality  of  Carlyle  that  charms   him.     What  he  says 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  211 

of  Tennyson  I  too  thought  in  my  boy's  days — ^that  is,  be- 
fore I  began  to  think:  Tennyson  has  many  spiritual  indi- 
cations, but  no  philosophy,  and  philosophy  is  the  palace  of 
thought. 

In  another  letter  he  writes  with  proper  disdain 
of  Ruskin's  "monstrous  assumption  of  wisdom." 

His  judgment  of  Carlyle  is  magnificent  and 
kindly : 

He  was  the  greatest  of  the  Britons  of  his  time — and 
after  the  British  fashion  of  not  coming  near  perfection; 
Titanic,  not  Olympian ;  a  heaver  of  rocks,  not  a  shaper. 
But  if  he  did  not  perfect  work,  he  had  lightning's  power 
to  strike  out  marvellous  pictures  and  reach  to  the  inmost 
of  men  with  a  phrase.  .  .  . 

In  reading  Carlyle,  bear  in  mind  that  he  is  a  humorist. 
The  insolence  offensive  to  you  is  part  of  his  humour.  He 
means  what  he  says,  but  only  as  far  as  a  humorist  can 
mean  what  he  sa.ys.  See  the  difference  between  him  and 
Emerson,  who  is,  on  the  contrary,  a  philosopher.  The  hu- 
morist, notwithstanding,  has  much  truth  to  back  him.  Swim 
on  his  pages,  take  his  poetry  and  fine  grisly  laughter,  his 
manliness,  together  with  some  splendid  teaching.  I  don't 
agree  with  Carlyle  a  bit — but  I  do  enjoy  him. 

And  this  superb  defence  of  the  Good  and  True  in 
the  shape  of  advice  to  his  son: 

The  Bible  is  outspoken  upon  facts,  and  rightly.  It  is 
because  the  world  is  stupidly  shamefaced  that  it  cannot 


212      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

come  into  contact  with  the  Bible  without  convulsions.  I 
agree  that  the  Book  should  be  read  out,  for  Society  is  a 
hypocrite,  and  I  would  accommodate  her  in  nothing; 
though  for  the  principle  of  Society  I  hold  that  men  should 
be  ready  to  lay  down  their  lives.  Belief  in  religion  has 
done  and  does  this  good  to  the  young ;  it  floats  them  through 
the  perilous  period  when  the  appetites  most  need  control 
and  transmutation.  If  you  have  not  the  belief,  set  your- 
self to  love  virtue  by  understanding  that  it  is  your  best 
guide,  both  as  to  what  is  due  to  others,  and  what  is  for 
your  positive  personal  good.  If  your  mind  honestly  re- 
jects it,  you  must  call  on  your  mind  to  supply  its  place 
from  your  own  resources.  Otherwise  you  will  have  only 
half  done  your  work,  and  that  is  mischievous.  You  know 
how  Socrates  loved  truth.  Truth  and  virtue  are  one.  Look 
for  the  truth  in  everything,  and  follow  it,  and  you  will 
then  be  living  justly  before  God.  Let  nothing  flout  your 
sense  of  a  Supreme  Being,  and  be  certain  that  your  under- 
standing wavers  whenever  you  chance  to  doubt  that  He 
leads  to  good.  We  grow  to  good  as  surely  as  the  plant 
grows  to  the  light. 

Again  and  again  these  letters  show  flashes  of 
Shakespearean  Insight:  all  his  letters  to  Lady  Ulrica 
Duncombe  (and  most  especially  his  letter  in  defence 
of  the  sensual  passion  of  his  own  Diana  of  the  Cross- 
ways)  are  quite  extraordinary.  He  sees  that  Lady 
Ulrica,  like  most  English  women,  "is  kindled  more 
martially  than  amorously;  not  so  much  softened  as 
elevated."  He  talks  superbly  of  woman's  courage 
as  "elastic,"  subject  to  ups  and  downs,  that  is;  but 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  213 

always  finding  strength  again  in  her  affections;  he 
will  not  have  man  or  woman  condemned  rigorously 
for  a  sensual  slip;  he  would  have  marriage  modified, 
shocked  England  indeed  by  proposing  to  legalize 
marriage  with  a  time  limit,  say  of  ten  years :  de- 
clared against  himself  that  "it  is  not  wholesome 
even  for  great  men  to  be  adored  while  they 
breathe";  deplored  the  fact  that  "the  English  don't 
want  their  novels  to  be  thoughtful,  the  characters 
to  be  deeply  studied,"  positively  preferring  conven- 
tional surface  sketches:  and  a  propos  of  something 
in  the  South  African  War  he  tells  his  countrymen 
that  "their  apathy  to  their  evil  deeds  is  not  only  a 
crime,  but  perceptibly  written  by  history  as  the  cause 
of  national  disaster."  On  every  page  indeed  he 
shows,  to  use  his  own  phrase,  "a  mind  that  has 
travelled." 

When  seventy-sev^en  years  of  age  he  concluded 
that  "England  has  little  criticism  beyond  the  expres- 
sion of  personal  likes  or  disHkes,  the  stout  vindica- 
tion of  an  old  conservatism  of  taste";  and  he  adds, 
"I  have  seen  many  reviews,  not  one  criticism  of  my 
books  in  prose  or  verse."  Was  there  ever  such  a 
condemnation  of  English  men  of  letters? 

The  last  letter  is  on  the  same  high  level.  It 
was  called  forth  by  the  death  of  Swinburne,  and  is 
boyishly  enthusiastic: 

"Song  was  his  natural  voice.  He  was  the  great- 
est of  our  lyrical  poets — of  the  world  I  could  say. 


214      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

considering  what  a  language  he  had  to  wield."  But 
many  years  before  he  had  put  his  finger  on  the  poet's 
weakness : 

Swinburne  is  not  subtle;  and  I  don't  see  any  internal 
centre  from  which  springs  anything  that  he  does.  He 
will  make  a  great  name,  but  whether  he  is  to  distinguish 
himself  solidly  as  an  artist  I  would  not  willingly  prog- 
nosticate. 

No  greatness  seemed  to  escape  him;  his  judg- 
ments even  of  Russian  writers  show  the  same  in- 
tuitive appreciation. 

It  was  characteristic  of  him,  I  think,  that  he 
underrated  German  literature;  probably  because  it 
Is  a  little  weak  in  the  romantic  and  heroic  elements 
he  most  prized  and  because  he  is  not  a  master  of 
the  language.  But  he  would  have  praised  the  Nie- 
belungen  Lied  and  the  poems  of  Wolfram  von 
Eschenbach  and  Heine  had  he  known  them.  Again 
and  again  we  find  him  coupling  Goethe  with  Shake- 
speare with  significant  assurance. 

Take  him  for  all  in  all  there  is  no  greater  figure 
In  English  literature,  except  Shakespeare  himself; 
In  spite  of  his  imperfect  accomplishment  Meredith 
should  rank  with  Emerson  and  Blake  among  our 
noblest.  I  do  not  care  much  for  his  novels,  one 
can  get  his  mind  better  through  his  poems,  and  best 
of  all  though  these  letters.  But  certain  of  his  poems 
will  live  as  long  as  the  language,   and  there   are 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  215 

pages  of  his  novels,  such  as  the  love-Idyll  In  Richard 
Fever  el  J  which  are  of  the  same  quality.  Here  is  a 
short  poem  almost  as  fine  as  Goethe's  best;  indeed 
It  Is  almost  a  rendering  of  the  magical  verse  be- 
ginning: Ueber  alien  Gipfeln  1st  Ruh.^ 

DraoE  IN  Woods 

A  wind  sways  the  pines 

And  below 
Not  a  breatli  of  wild  air; 
Still  as  the  mosses  that  glow 
On  the  flooring  and  over  the  lines 
Of  the  roots  here  and  there. 
The  pine  tree  drops  its  dead; 
They  are  quiet  as  under  the  sea. 
Overhead,  overhead 
Rushes  life  in  a  race. 
As  the  clouds  the  clouds  chase; 

And  we  go. 
And  we  drop  like  the  fruits  of  the  tree. 
Even  we. 
Even  so. 

^  I  have  Englished  this  verse  so  that  my  readers  may  compare 
the  two  masters;  but  my  rendering  is  shockingly  inferior  to  the 
original. 

O'er  all  the  hilltops  is  silence  now, 
From  all  the  forest  hearest  thou 
Hardly  a  breath. 
The  birds  in  the  woodlands  are  nesting. 
Patience — soon  thou  will  be  resting 
Gently  in  Death. 


2i6      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

I  have  given  his  written  judgments  of  his  literary 
contemporaries  at  some  length  because  they  show,  I 
think,  the  ripest  critical  faculty  to  be  found  in  any 
literature.  This  man,  one  would  say,  had  the  widest, 
fairest  mind  imaginable:  it  fails  nowhere.  If  one 
compares  him  with  the  best  critics  so  called,  his 
superiority  is  astounding:  matched  with  him  the 
Hazlitts  and  Sainte  Beuves  are  pigmies:  Swin- 
burne continually  overshoots  the  mark  in  praise  or 
blame:  Matthew  Arnold  is  snobbish,  and  petty 
and  hidebound:  Emerson  is  puritanical;  even  Goethe 
lacks  the  subtle  sureness  of  appreciation,  the  vivid 
painting  phrases.  Shakespeare  alone  has  the  same 
imperial  vision  wedded  to  magic  of  expression. 

These  Letters  give  me  the  same  sense  of  fullness 
as  Meredith's  wonderful  talk;  I  have  often  come 
away  from  him  feeling  that  on  everything  we  had 
discussed  his  judgment  was  final.  I  have  never 
met  so  fine  a  mind,  so  perfect  a  mirror;  were  it 
not  for  that  harshness  of  moral  condemnation  of 
which  I  have  given  an  instance,  and  that  bias  of 
insular  patriotism,  I  should  have  said  that  in  Mere- 
dith, as  in  Shakespeare,  one  touched  the  zenith  of 
humanity. 

In  these  crucial  matters  he  fell  short  of  the  ideal. 
In  virile  virtues  he  was  better  endowed  than  Shake- 
speare: he  had  loved  passionately,  but  had  not  lost 
himself  in  passion:  he  had  fought  again  and  again 
for  unpopular  causes   and  had  stood   against  the 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  217 

world  for  the  Right  with  heroic  courage:  he  had 
accepted  all  the  conditions  of  life  without  murmur 
or  complaint,  and  had  triumphed  over  all  difficulties; 
he  had  lived  in  poverty  without  cringing  or  revolt; 
one  of  our  Conquerors  for  all  time;  after  a  more 
desperate  battle  than  Browning  waged  he  had  won 
to  greater  sweetness  of  nature.  I  call  him  a  great 
man  and  a  noble,  not  so  great  as  Shakespeare,  who 
rose  above  race-vanity  and  above  condemnation  of 
even  the  worst  of  men  to  those  heights  where  "par- 
don's the  word  to  all"  and  where  malice  Itself  can 
only  mean  forgiveness.  But  Meredith's  life  and  be- 
ing are  witness  enough  that  this  age  of  ours  is  the 
noblest  age  in  all  history,  for  he  did  not  dwarf  his 
contemporaries  and  his  stature  is  proof  sufficient 
that  men  will  yet  be  born  on  earth  greater  than  any 
of  our  models.  Nature  Is  always  surpassing  her- 
self, and  her  most  prodigious  achievement  today  but 
prepares  a  nobler  accomplishment  tomorrow. 

It  is  worth  notice  perhaps  that  Meredith  did  not 
pass  almost  unrecognized  through  life  as  Shake- 
speare passed  and  Cervantes.  He  was  fairly  well 
known  to  a  good  many  of  us.  Barrie  and  Max  Beer- 
bohm  wrote  of  him  during  his  lifetime  as  the  great- 
est man  since  Shakespeare:  Lord  Morley  took  care 
that  he  should  have  the  Order  of  Merit,  and  though 
his  novels  never  had  a  large  sale  and  his  poems 
hardly  covered  the  cost  of  publication,  all  the  best 
readers  in  the  English-speaking  lands  were  his  de- 


2i8      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

voted  and  enthusiastic  friends  and  admirers.  He 
was  the  one  writer  of  the  time  of  whom  we  were  all 
proud.  He  went  through  life  crowned,  and  nothing 
he  said  or  did  injured  his  reputation  or  tarnished 
the  sovereign  lustre  of  his  genius.  He  was  poor 
with  dignity  and  a  friend  of  man  without  affectation 
or  snobbishness :  his  joy  in  living,  his  sympathy,  his 
happy  vahance  made  life  brighter  to  all  of  us. 


ROBERT  BROWNING 

IT  was  as  a  student  in  Gottingen  that  I  first  got 
to  know  Robert  Browning.  The  passion  of  the 
lyrics  "The  Last  Ride  Together,"  "In  a  Gondola," 
and  many  others  enthralled  me,  and  the  "Men  and 
Women"  taught  me  that  the  great  lover  was  a  great 
man  to  boot;  but  it  was  "The  Ring  and  the  Book" 
which  gave  me  his  measure,  allowed  me,  so  to  speak, 
to  lay  my  ear  to  the  page  and  listen  to  Browning's 
heart  beat.  Curiously  enough,  a  little  thing  became 
a  sort  of  symbol  of  my  liking  for  the  man,  the  gen- 
erous kindly  warmth  of  his  dedications  to  John  Ken- 
yon  and  Barry  Cornwall  and  Sergeant  Talfourd. 
The  world  knows  little  about  these  almost  forgot- 
ten worthies,  but  just  because  of  that  the  notices  re- 
minded me  of  Balzac's  numerous  dedications,  and 
everything  connected  with  Balzac,  however  remote, 
has  a  certain  significance  for  me.  For  Balzac  is  one 
of  the  "Sacred  Band"  who  has  enlarged  one's  con- 
ception of  human  capacity  and  given  new  horizons 
to  the  spirit.  Browning  profited  by  this  connection, 
and  when  some  years  later  I  came  to  London  to 
work  I  hoped  to  meet  the  poet  who  was  at  least  half 
a  seer  as  a  poet  should  be.    I  used  to  call  Browning 

219 


220      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

to  myself  "Greatheart,"  for  his  courage  and  con- 
fidence and  hope,  and  as  "Greatheart"  I  often  spoke 
of  him. 

One  day,  I  think  In  1888  or  1889,  I  went  to  lunch 
at  Lady  Shrewsbury's.  It  was  a  large  party;  an 
earl  was  on  the  right  of  the  hostess  and  a  promi- 
nent Member  of  the  House  of  Commons  on  her 
left:  opposite  me,  about  the  middle  of  the  table,  was 
a  small  man  inclined  to  be  stout,  carefully  dressed, 
with  healthy  tanned  skin,  blue  eyes  and  silver  hair. 
He  had  a  red  tie  on,  and  to  my  shortsightedness 
seemed  commonplace.  Suddenly  some  one  addressed 
him  as  Mr.  Browning.  Breathless  I  turned  to  my 
neighbor,  a  lady;  "Is  that  Robert  Browning  the 
poet?"  I  asked  In  wonder.  "I  think  so,"  she  re- 
plied, a  little  surprised  at  my  tone,  "he's  nice.  Isn't 
he?  But  I'm  afraid  I  don't  know  much  about 
poetry:  I  don't  care  for  It  really:  I'm  not  liter- 
ary." I  hardly  heard  her  chatter:  so  that  was  Rob- 
ert Browning:  I  gazed  and  gazed,  studied  his  face, 
his  eyes,  his  expression;  but  could  not  see  anything: 
his  eyes  were  blue  and  clear,  his  nose  a  little  beaked; 
but  there  was  nothing  distinguished  about  him,  I 
had  to  admit  to  myself,  nothing  peculiar  even, 
nothing  remarkable.  Of  course,  I  took  myself  to 
task  at  once:  "What  had  I  expected,  a  giant  or  an 
ogre?"  "No,  no,"  my  heart  replied,  "yet  I  had 
hoped  to  catch  In  eyes  or  expression  something  to 


ROBERT  BROWNING  221 

show  the  greatness  of  the  spirit;  but  nothing,  noth- 

ing." 

He  spoke  to  his  neighbors  in  a  low  tone,  kept 
the  quiet  manners  and  reserve  of  the  ordinary  gen- 
tleman, using  politeness  perhaps  as  a  barrier  be- 
tween himself  and  the  world. 

I  was  introduced  to  him,  and  told  him  how  glad 
I  was  to  meet  him;  how  his  work  had  delighted 
me.  He  bowed  as  if  I  had  been  using  ordinary 
conventional  phrases  and  turned  away,  his  cool, 
indifferent  manner  fencing  him  off  from  my  enthu- 
siastic admiration.  I  could  get  nothing  from  him, 
no  glint  of  fire  from  the  polished  flint. 

I  met  him  again  and  again  that  season,  but  never 
got  inside  his  armor.  Once  or  twice  I  had  hardly 
spoken  to  him,  I  had  contented  myself  with  bowing, 
so  convinced  I  was  that  it  was  impossible  to  enter 
into  intimate  relations  with  him. 

One  day  I  was  at  Mrs.  Jeune's  at  lunch.  On 
her  right  she  had  Russell  Lowell,  the  American  Am- 
bassador: on  her  left  a  Cabinet  Minister.  I  was 
at  the  other  end  of  the  table,  on  the  left  of  the  host, 
who  had  Browning  on  his  right  hand.  The  conver- 
sation at  our  end  of  the  table  was  formal  and  dull, 
but  Russell  Lowell  was  in  great  form  and  kept  the 
table  interested  and  amused  to  judge  by  the  laughter 
of  the  pretty  women. 

At  the  end  of  lunch  Russell  Lowell  got  up  to  go, 
excusing  himself,  and  the  bevy  of  women  all  gath- 


222      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

ered  about  him  talking  and  laughing.  It  made  a 
good  picture,  Lowell  with  his  leonine  grey  head, 
bright  and  happy  as  a  schoolboy,  and  the  women 
flirting  with  him  with  that  happy  mixture  of  con- 
fidence and  familiarity  that  young  women  often  show 
distinguished  men  on  the  verge  of  old  age. 

I  had  gone  round  to  Browning's  side  of  the  table. 
I  don't  know  how  the  conversation  commenced,  but 
I  remember  quoting  in  illustration  of  something  I 
said,  a  verse  of  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  with  passionate  ap- 
preciation. 

Suddenly  there  came  a  peal  of  laughter  from  the 
other  end  of  the  room.  Lowell,  exclaiming  "the 
one  privilege  of  age,"  was  kissing  the  pretty  hands 
extended  to  him  when  taking  his  leave.  Suddenly 
Browning  clutched  my  arm. 

"But  what  has  he  done,"  he  said,  indicating  Low- 
ell with  his  head  at  the  other  end  of  the  room,  "what 
has  he  done  to  be  so  feted?" 

The  tone  was  so  angry,  so  bitter,  that  I  started. 

"He  has  lived  for  just  that,"  I  replied,  "that  is 
why  he  made  verse  and  not  poetry.  He  wanted  the 
facile  admiration  of  the  moment  and  the  liking  of 
pretty  women:  he  has  got  them.  But  there  are 
three  or  four  who  honor  you  at  this  table,  who  don't 
care  whether  Lowell  is  alive  or  dead." 

"One  tries  to  console  oneself  with  thoughts  like 
that,"  Browning  admitted,  "but  it  is  difficult  as  one 
grows  older.    When  one  Is  young,  one  Is  so  occupied 


ROBERT  BROWNING  223 

with  the  work  that  one  doesn't  much  care  whether 
it  is  liked  or  disliked,  but  later,  when  one  has  fought 
and  had,  at  any  rate,  a  partial  success,  it  is  hard  to 
see  others  who  have  not  fought  at  all,  put  before 
one." 

Naturally  I  did  my  best  to  show  him  the  other 
side.  I  spoke  to  him  of  the  enthusiastic  admiration 
of  the  little  group  of  literary  students  at  Heidelberg 
and  Gottlngen,  who  thought  more  of  him  than  of 
any  living  poet.  His  only  competitor  in  our  admira- 
tion, I  told  him,  was  Victor  Hugo;  If  he  had  paid 
a  visit  to  Germany  we  should  have  chaired  him 
through  the  streets.     He  appeared  to  be  gratified. 

We  went  away  together  and  walked,  I  remember, 
across  the  park,  and  from  that  day  on  I  began  to 
know  him.  I  soon  found  that  all  he  had  to  give  he 
had  given  in  his  books:  in  fact,  I  came  to  see  that 
the  poetry,  the  mere  words,  or.  If  you  will,  the  in- 
spiration of  the  moment  had  lent  him  thoughts  be- 
yond his  seeing. 

Take  this  verse  in  which  he  shows  that  injustice, 
or  wrong  may  have  a  good  result  as  a  spur: 

Then,  welcome  each  rebuff 
That  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough. 
Each  sting  that  bids  nor  sit  nor  stand  but  go ! 
Be  our  joys  three-parts  pain! 
Strive,  and  hold  cheap  the  strain; 
Learn,  nor  account  the  pang;  dare,  never  grudge 
the  throe! 


224      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

Or  this  one  with  its  lofty  optimism: 

Therefore  I  summon  age 
To  grant  youth's  heritage. 

Life's  struggle  having  so  far  reached  its  term: 
Thence  shall  I  pass,  approved 
A  man,  for  aye  removed 

From  the  developed  brute;  a  God  though  in  the 
germ. 

Here  is  the  heart  of  his  song  and  it  is  mere  Chris- 
tian: 

Not  once  beat  "Praise  be  Thine! 
"I  see  the  whole  design, 
"I,  who  saw  power,  see  now  love  perfect  too: 
"Perfect  I  call  Thy  plan: 
"Thanks  that  I  was  a  man ! 

"Maker,  remake,  complete, — I   trust  what  Thou 
shalt  do !" 

No  honest  human  soul  can  call  the  plan  "perfect." 
Browning  was  certainly  bigger  in  his  writings  than 
he  was  in  intimacy.  He  is  often  spoken  of  as  the 
least  inspired  of  poets.  To  my  mind  he  owed  more 
to  verse  and  the  inspiration  of  reflection  than  any 
man  of  genius  I  ever  met.  His  belief  as  shown  in 
the  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  and  other  poems  is  uncompro- 
mising, definite,  clear,  authoritative  as  the  utterance 
of  a  Jewish  prophet.  But  when  you  probed  the  man 
in  quiet  conversation,  you  found  no  such  certainty. 


ROBERT  BROWNING  225 

His  beliefs  were  really  a  mere  echo  of  his  child- 
hood's faith,  and  his  optimism  was  of  health  and 
sound  heart  rather  than  of  insight.  He  was  not  one 
of  those  who  had  gone  round  the  world  and  returned 
to  his  native  place;  he  had  always  lingered  in  the 
vicinity  of  home  without  seel<:ing  to  justify  his  pref- 
erence. His  was  a  bookish  mind,  and  apart  from 
books  not  eventfully  original.  He  had  spent  many 
years  in  Italy  without  knowing  the  Italian,  and  had 
lived  on  the  crater-edge  of  socialist  unrest  almost 
without  noticing  it.  Unfortunately  for  his  fame  he 
had  always  had  a  competence,  enough  to  live  on 
comfortably  and  so  had  never  to  struggle  with  the 
necessities  and  learn  their  lesson.  Had  he  ever 
gone  hungry  and  been  forced  to  eat  "the  bitter-salt 
bread"  of  humiliation  that  Dante  spoke  of  he  might 
have  become  a  world-poet.  As  it  was  he  accepted 
all  the  pitiable  conventions  of  London  society  be- 
cause he  was  used  to  them,  just  as  he  donned  the 
dress.  I  have  heard  him  tell  a  fairly  good  story; 
I  never  heard  him  say  anything  original.  In  fact, 
if  I  had  not  known  his  poetry  I  should  have  met 
him  and  talked  to  him  many  times  without  ever 
imagining  that  he  was  a  man  of  any  distinction  of 
mind. 

Of  course,  all  this  may  well  be  my  fault:  some- 
thing in  me  may  have  displeased  him :  I  sought  to 
explain  it  to  myself  by  saying  we  were  not  of  the 
same  generation.   For  Frederic  Harrison  gives  a  dif- 


226      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

ferent  picture  of  him,  speaks  of  him  as  "genial,  full 
of  story  and  jest" ;  but  even  he,  who  finds  something 
good  to  say  of  all  the  men  of  that  time,  does  not 
record  anything  remarkable  of  Robert  Browning. 

Again  and  again  I  tried  to  find  out  something 
about  the  married  life  of  the  Brownings;  it  was 
hardly  possible  that  two  sensitive  poets  should  have 
lived  together  for  twenty  years  In  perfect  harmony, 
but  till  lately  I  never  heard  an  authentic  word  on 
the  subject.  A  short  time  ago,  however,  I  met  a 
relative  of  the  Tennysons  who  told  me  that  she  had 
heard  from  the  poet  laureate  that  the  Brownings 
often  quarrelled  like  ordinary  folk,  and  the  root  of 
their  disagreement  was  usually  the  jealousy  he  felt 
when  his  wife's  poetry  was  overpraised.  I  am  not 
inclined  to  attribute  much  weight  to  this  report.  I 
think  it  may  be  taken  that,  on  the  whole,  the  Brown- 
ings lived  happily  together,  and  so  far  as  I  could 
learn,  his  faithfulness  was  not  even  questioned  in 
scandal-loving  London.  It  is  certain  that  Browning 
spoke  of  his  wife  to  the  very  end  with  fanatical  ad- 
miration. 

What  a  wretched  silhouette  this  is  to  give  of  Rob- 
ert Browning;  what  a  poor  thin  sketch!  It  would 
have  been  better,  I  think  I  hear  the  reader  say,  to 
have  said  nothing  at  all  about  him.  Yet  I  cannot 
agree  with  this;  If  I  failed  to  get  near  Browning  it 
was  not  through  lack  of  desire  on  my  part,  or  lack  of 
sympathy.    My  utter  failure  simply  shows  how  hard 


ROBERT  BROWNING  227 

it  Is  for  us  to  know  our  fellow-men  rightly  even  when 
we  approach  them  in  the  best  spirit.  Yet  the  magic 
of  his  noble  optimism  and  the  music  of  his  verse  are 
always  with  me : 

Rejoice  we  are  allied 
To  That  which  doth  provide 
And  not  partake^  effect  and  not  receive ! 
A  spark  disturbs  our  clod; 
Nearer  we  hold  of  God 

Who  gives,  than  of  His  tribes  that  take,  I 
must  believe. 

The  failure  to  find  anything  heroic  or  wise  or  of 
deepest  humanity  in  Browning  should  simply  warn 
the  reader  that  the  mirror  of  my  soul  held  up  for 
these  reflections  Is  after  all  a  poor  clouded  mirror, 
dulled  with  fog  of  life  and  stained  with  soilure  of 
earth,  untrustworthy  even  at  its  brightest. 


SWINBURNE:    THE    POET    OF   YOUTH 
AND    REVOLT 

SWINBURNE  Is  dead;  and  a  part  of  our  youth 
seems  to  have  passed  with  him,  to  have  dropped 
into  the  dim  backward  and  abysm  of  Time.  The 
natural  regret  is  overpowered  by  the  insurgent 
thrill  of  memory.  Swinburne  was  the  hot  voice  of 
youth  and  the  joy  of  living,  the  cry  of  revolt  against 
the  smug  Victorian  respectability,  and  the  syrupy 
creed  of  Tennyson.  For  many  years  he  was  the 
most  vital  thing  in  England,  and  naturally,  in  Eng- 
lish fashion,  the  authorities  passed  him  by  and  made 
a  lackey,  laureate  in  his  place.  The  soul  of  the  new 
paganism  was  in  him,  which  is  the  soul  of  yester- 
day and  today  and  many  a  day  to  come.  With 
right  instinct  the  whole  cry  of  ha'penny  critics  is 
quoting  "The  Garden  of  Proserpine"  with  its  pagan 
hopelessness: 

From  too  much  love  of  living, 

From  hope  and  fear  set  free. 

We  thank  witli  brief  tlianksgiving. 
Whatever  Gods  may  be, 
228 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH  BY  HOLLYER,  PORTRAIT 

BY  G.  F.  WATTS 


SWINBURNE  229 

That  no  life  lives  for  ever. 
That  dead  men  rise  iip  never, 
That  even   the  weariest  river. 
Winds  somewhere  safe  to  sea. 

And  the  passion  of  paganism,  too,  he  rendered 
again  and  again,  deathlessly  (though  the  journahsts 
are  afraid  to  quote  it)  in  "The  Leper"  and  "Faus- 
tine,"  and  perhaps  most  characteristically  in  these 
lines  from  "Anactoria,"  where  Sappho  herself 
aches  for  fulfilment. 

Alas,  that  neither  moon  nor  snow  nor  dew, 

Nor  all  cold  things  can  purge  me  wholly  through. 

Assuage  me,  nor  allay  me,  nor  appease, 

Till  supreme  sleep  shall  bring  me  bloodless  ease. 

Till  time  wax  faint  in  all  his  periods. 

Till  Fate  undo  the  bondage  of  the  Gods; 

And  lay  to  slake  and  satiate  me  all  through, 

Lotus  and  Lethe  on  my  lips  like  dew. 

And  shed  around  and  over  and  under  me 

Thick  darkness  and  the  insuperable  sea. 

But  Swinburne  was  more  than  a  poet  of  passion 
and  despair,  he  has  turned  into  incomparable  music 
all  the  culture  and  idealisms,  the  faiths  and  follies 
of  youth,  and  it  is  this  which  gives  him  European 
importance,  and  makes  him  more  interesting  than  a 
Leopardi  or  a  Verlaine. 

The  choruses  of  the  "Atalanta  in  Calydon"  lent 
to  English  for  the  first  time  the  plangent  syllabifica- 


230      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

tlon  and  sonorous  melody  of  the  best  work  of  Soph- 
ocles or  Euripides;  the  beat  and  music  of  the  verse 
are  irresistible : 

Before  the  beginning  of  years 

There  came  to  the  making  of  man 

Time  with  a  gift  of  tears; 

Grief  with  a  glass  that  ran. 

And 

Eyesight  and  speech  they  wrought 

As  veils  of  the  soul  therein, 
A  time  for  labour  and  thought, 

A  time  to  serve  and  to  sin. 

Who  can  ever  forget  the  lament  of  Meleager  and 
the  glorious  answer  of  Atalanta : 

I  would  that  with  feet 

Unsandall'd,  unshod. 
Overbold,  overfleet, 

I  had  swum  not,  nor  trod 
From  Arcadia  to  Calydon  northward 

A  blast  of  the  envy  of  God! 

What  did  it  matter  to  us  that  the  phrase  "A 
blast  of  the  envy  of  God"  was  taken  from  Euri- 
pides; it  had  a  new  weight  in  English,  an  added 
value. 

Goethe  himself  never  gave  nobler  music  to  Pan- 
theism than  Swinburne  did  in  "Hertha." 


SWINBURNE  231 

I  am  that  which  began. 

Out  of  me  the  years  roll. 
Out  of  me  God  and  man — 

I  am  equal  and  whole. 
God  changes  and   Man,  and  the   form    of  them 
Bodily: 

I  am  the  soul. 


But  what  dost  thou  now 

Looking  Godward  to  cry, 
"I  am  I;  Thou  art  Thou; 

I  am  low;  Thou  art  high." 
I  am  thou  whom  thou  seekest  to  find. 
Find  thou  but  thyself,  Thou  art  I. 

I  the  seed  that  is  sown. 

And  the  plough-cloven  clod. 
And  the  ploughshare  drawn  thorough 

The  germ  and  the  sod. 
The  seed  and  the  sower,  the  deed  and  the  doer. 

The  dust  which  is   God! 

All  the  hero-worship  of  youth  Is  in  Swinburne, 
magnificently  rendered  In  the  poems  to  Landor, 
Hugo,  Gautler,  and  Blake,  and  in  the  prose  poems 
to  Shakespeare  and  Scott.  All  obvious,  fixed  stars, 
one  might  object,  but  that,  too.  Is  youth's  way,  and  Is 
right  so  far  as  It  goes.  The  deathless  faith  In  man 
and  the  Kingdom  of  Man  upon  earth;  the  passion 
for  equality,  and  the  superb  contempt  for  popes  and 


232      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

crowns  and  false  values — all  youth's  Idealisms  and 
revolts  set  to  glorious  music  once  for  all,  and  made 
imperishable.  Swinburne  was  the  poet  of  youth, 
and  his  heritage  is  as  wide  as  the  world,  and  his 
lovers  as  numerous  as  the  sands  of  the  sea,  for  all 
youths  will  love  him  and  quote  him  with  hot  hearts 
and  passionate  tears  so  long  as  English  is  spoken. 

Before  I  ever  met  Swinburne  I  had  a  certain 
image  of  him  in  my  mind,  a  sort  of  composite  photo- 
graph built  up  partly  from  his  verses  and  even  more 
from  talks  about  him  with  men  who  had  known  him 
intimately.  Whistler  in  particular,  I  remember,  had 
given  me  a  snapshot  of  him  when  he  lived  in  Cheyne 
Walk  with  Rossetti — an  inimitable  unforgettable 
silhouette  etched  into  a  grotesque,  as  if  the  gall-acid 
had  run  upon  the  plate  broadening  the  lines  and 
deepening  the  shadows  to  caricature.  He  told 
of  the  weird  sitting  room  turned  Into  a  me- 
nagerie of  wild  beasts  by  Rossetti  into  which 
Swinburne  burst  one  summer  morning,  naked  as  the 
day  he  was  born,  wild  with  enthusiasm  over  some 
Greek  verses  he  had  just  discovered  which  he  in- 
sisted upon  chanting  with  frantic  gestures:  "There 
he  was,"  Whistler  concluded,  "swimming  about  like 
a  blonde  Bacchante  drunken  with  sound."  I  only 
give  the  sketch  to  warn  my  readers  that  every  one  of 
us  carries  to  a  meeting  with  any  of  the  Immortals 
certain  preconceived  Ideas  and  prejudgments  which 
twist  and  tinge  the  impression  they  make  on  us.    In 


SWINBURNE  233 

order  to  give  a  true  image,  a  perfect  representment, 
the  mind  at  such  a  time  ought  to  be  a  pure  sensitized 
plate;  but  it  is  not;  it  is  a  plate,  so  to  speak,  already 
scratched  with  innumerable  lines  and  warped  in  a 
hundred  fires,  and  even  the  image  thus  received  can- 
not be  reproduced  with  perfect  fidehty. 

As  I  lived  near  Putney  for  a  good  many  years  I 
saw  Swinburne  frequently.  Driving  into  town  about 
noon  I  used  to  look  out  for  him,  and  met  him  or 
passed  him  hundreds  of  times  till  his  figure  became 
familiar  to  me.  He  was  not  of  imposing  appear- 
ance; about  five  feet  four,  or  perhaps  five  in  height, 
with  sloping  bottle  shoulders,  pigeon  chest,  and  dis- 
proportionately large  hips.  There  was  a  certain 
vigor  or  perkiness  in  his  walk:  his  legs  at  least 
were  strong,  and  carried  the  little  podgy  body 
briskly.  He  usually  wore  a  great  felt  wideawake, 
which  made  his  head  look  like  a  melon,  and  as  he 
jerked  along  talking  to  himself  and  swinging  his 
arms,  with  his  head  thrown  back  and  his  unkempt 
auburn-grey  beard  floating,  one  felt  inclined  to  smile. 
Whenever  he  saw  a  pretty  child  in  a  perambulator 
he  used  to  stop  and  notice  it,  and  nursemaids  still 
tell  stories  of  how  he  mistook  little  boys  for  girls. 
He  was  a  lover  of  children  and  of  beauty  at  all 
times. 

When  I  began  to  edit  The  Fortnightly  Review 
I  wrote  asking  Swinburne  to  contribute,  and  from 
time  to  time  he  sent  me  articles  and  poems,  all  writ- 


234      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

ten  in  a  round  schoolboy  hand,  with  extraordinary 
care  and  clearness.  The  printers,  of  course,  paid 
no  attention  to  his  reasoned  punctuation,  and  their 
mistakes  used  to  annoy  him  excessively;  he  insisted 
upon  revise  after  revise — a  proceeding  I  felt  to  be 
natural  enough  In  regard  to  his  poetry,  but  extrava- 
gantly meticulous  and  conceited  when  his  prose  alone 
was  concerned.  I  never  could  take  his  prose  seri- 
ously; somehow  or  other  it  always  reminded  me  of 
the  little  wooden  painted  marionettes  of  a  child's 
Noah's  ark.  Even  when  the  judgments  were  wise 
and  shrewd,  and  whenever  lyric  poetry  was  In  ques- 
tion, Swinburne's  opinions  were  nearly  always  finely 
right  and  sometimes  of  surprising  divination,  yet  the 
wording  of  them  was  always  antithetical,  labored 
and  stilted  to  a  degree.  His  judgments  of  prose 
writers,  dramatists,  or  novelists  were  as  faulty  as  his 
prose;  he  overpraised  Scott  and  Dickens  absurdly, 
ranking  them  with  the  greatest,  probably  because 
his  own  faculty  of  thought  was  immature.  Yet  his 
criticism  was  invariably  interesting;  he  usually  had 
some  reason  for  the  faith  that  was  In  him. 

For  years  and  years  I  had  no  closer  relations  with 
Swinburne.  About  1897  or  1898,  however,  some 
things  I  had  written  about  Shakespeare  interested 
Swinburne's  friend,  Mr.  Theodore  Watts,  who  came 
to  see  me  about  them,  and  then  asked  me  to  dine,  to 
meet  Swinburne.  I  accepted  and  went  one  evening 
to  the  Pines.    The  dinner  was  very  EngHsh;  I  mean 


SWINBURNE  235 

by  that  there  were  no  modern  kickshaws  or  French 
sorbets  or  savories;  but  very  plain,  old-fashioned 
English  fare :  there  were  two  chickens,  I  remember, 
and  roast  beef  and  apple  pie  with  custard — enough 
for  a  dozen  men,  and  a  couple  of  bottles  of  sound 
Burgundy  to  promote  good-will.  We  all  appeared 
to  be  blessed  with  keen  appetites,  and  after  dinner 
settled  down  to  talk. 

I  don't  know  why,  but  the  conversation  fell  on 
Henley  and  his  enthusiastic  praise  of  Monte  Crista 
and  The  Three  Musketeers,  which  seemed  to  me 
boyish,  exaggerated.  I  ventured  to  remark  that  I 
would  rather  have  written  Le  Vicomte  de  Brage- 
lonne  than  all  the  rest  of  Dumas  put  together  were 
It  only  for  the  character  of  Louise  de  la  Valliere, 
and  I  was  astonished  to  find  that  Swinburne  agreed 
with  me  enthusiastically,  indeed  he  put  la  Valliere 
"among  the  finest  women-portraits  in  French  liter- 
ature." I  could  not  help  saying  a  word  for  Manon 
Lescaut  and  La  Cousine  Bette, — and  the  Master 
admitted  their  claims  to  supremacy  with  delighted 
smile  and  nod. 

Emboldened  by  this  accord  I  ventured  to  ask 
whether  he  really  placed  Hugo  beside  Shakespeare, 
and  was  dumbfounded  to  find  that  he  did;  he  quoted 
some  verses  of  Hugo — from  "La  Legende  des 
Siecles,"  I  think;  magnificent  rhetoric  which  he  gave 
wonderfully,  his  whole  face  lighting  up,  the  auburn 
mane  thrown  back,  the  greenish  eyes  flaming,  the 


236      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

great  dome  of  the  forehead  lending  weight  to  the 
swift  sonorous  words. 

I  did  not  dare  to  touch  on  Shakespeare  with  him: 
he  had  evidently  been  accustomed  and  encouraged 
to  play  pontiff  to  such  an  extent  that  to  have  differed 
from  him  would  have  been  lese-majeste  at  the  least, 
and,  besides,  his  opinions  on  the  subject  were  known 
to  me,  and  I  had  no  desire  to  shake  them. 

I  preferred  to  keep  the  ball  rolling  while  study- 
ing his  face  and  manner.  When  he  quoted  poetry 
he  mouthed  it,  as  all  poets  are  inclined  to  do,  bring- 
ing out  the  value  of  the  metre  at  the  cost  of  the  sense 
and  magic  of  expression.  Poets  are  often  mu- 
sicians first  and  intelligences  afterwards. 

His  pronunciation  of  French  was  that  of  a  native, 
and  he  seemed  to  know  all  French  poetry  by  heart. 
To  something  he  said  I  muttered  Prudhomme's 
"Je  suis  las  des  mots.  .  .  ."  and  again  he  caught  fire 
ancl  went  on  quoting  with  intense  enjoyment  the 
great  verse  and  hopeless  refrain: 

Pour  ne  pas  sentir  a  ma  derniere  heure 

Que  le  coeur  se  fend; 
Pour  ne  plu3  penser,  pour  que  rhomme  meure 

Comme  est  ne  I'enfant. 

Vous  qui  m'aiderez  daus  men  agonie, 

Ne  me  ditcs  rien 
Faites  que  j'entends  un  pen  d'harmonie 

Et  je  mourrai  bien. 


SWINBURNE  237 

I  have  never  met  anyone  whose  knowledge  of 
Greek,  English  and  French  poetry  was  at  all  com- 
parable to  Swinburne's;  as  soon  as  you  began  to 
quote  any  fine  passage  he  would  take  it  up  and  go 
on  declaiming  endlessly. 

When  he  got  interested  he  crossed  his  legs  and 
uncrossed  them,  tossing  one  upon  the  other  rapidly, 
while  his  fingers  were  twitching  and  his  head  jerk- 
ing about,  almost  like  an  epileptic.  He  was  evi- 
dently intensely  excitable;  the  mind  and  nerves  far 
stronger  than  the  body — over-engined,  so  to  speak, 
like  Shakespeare.  Indeed,  in  a  thousand  ways  he 
reminded  me  of  what  Shakespeare  must  have  been: 
the  same  swiftness  of  speech  and  thought,  the  same 
nervous  excitability,  and  much  the  same  physique, 
the  little  podgy  body,  the  domed  forehead,  the 
auburn  hair,  only  the  eyes  were  different — Shake- 
speare's a  light  hazel,  Swinburne's  a  greenish-grey. 
I  picture  Shakespeare  as  a  little  larger  and  stronger, 
with  a  more  resolute  jaw  and  chin;  handsomer  too, 
if  his  contemporaries  are  to  be  believed,  and  of  far 
sweeter  manners. 

I  wanted  Swinburne  to  tell  me  of  Rossetti,  in 
whom  I  have  always  been  intensely  interested;  but 
with  characteristic  courtliness  he  referred  me  to 
Mr.  Theodore  Watts,  who  "knew  Rossetti  most  in- 
timately." 

I  felt  impelled  to  follow  his  lead,  for  already  sev- 
eral things  had  become  plain  to  me,  the  most  impor- 


238      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

tant  being  that  Swinburne  in  his  books  had  said  all 
he  had  to  say  of  any  moment,  and  could  not  be 
led  by  me  to  peer  into  the  unknown  or  unfamiliar; 
I  was  too  late;  his  mind  had  passed  the  period  of 
growth  and  become  fossilized.  Swinburne  was  far 
older  at  sixty-two  or  three  than  Carlyle  was  at 
eighty;  his  intellectual  sympathies  were  cast  iron; 
they  could  not  be  widened,  whereas  Carlyle  was  as 
eager  to  hear  and  consider  new  ideas  as  a  boy. 
When  I  mentioned  Carlyle  with  praise,  the  light 
died  out  of  Swinburne's  face;  it  became  lifeless  and 
forbidding;  clearly  his  mind  was  made  up  about 
Carlyle  and  could  not  be  altered. 

Altogether  Swinburne  seemed  to  me  a  creature  of 
extraordinary  talent  rather  than  a  man  of  real 
genius.  Take  away  from  him  his  divine  gift  of  song 
and  he  would  hardly  have  become  known  in  litera- 
ture. There  was  no  elevation  in  his  mind;  no  hu- 
mor in  his  outlook;  no  width  of  understanding;  no 
fertility  of  ideas.  He  was  an  astonishing  poet,  but 
not  by  any  means  an  astonishing  intelligence;  he  had 
five  or  six  main  ideas,  or  rather  sympathies,  and  no 
wish  to  enlarge  the  meagre  store.  It  was  evidently 
Mr.  Theodore  Watts  who  inspired  the  so-called  Im- 
perialism of  his  later  years.  He  was  a  Jingo  at 
sixty,  thanks  to  this  Intimate  friend,  or  dry  nurse  as 
I  called  him  In  my  thought,  just  as  he  was  a  republi- 
can at  thirty,  thanks  to  Mazzini  and  Hugo.  He 
never  seemed  to  have  grown  mentally  after  his  sev- 


SWINBURNE  23$ 

enteenth  year.  It  was  his  want  of  Intelligence  which 
left  him  stranded  at  forty-five  as  the  poet  of  youth. 
Still,  he  was  always  an  Interesting  and  attractive 
personality;  he  had  high  courtesies  in  him  and  In- 
born loyalties,  and  an  aristocratic  contempt  for  all 
conventional  lies  and  false  values.  He  always  lived, 
too,  In  a  nobly  serious  way  for  the  things  of  the 
spirit,  the  things  that  have  enduring  worth  and  the 
consecration  of  the  Ideal. 

The  English  people  should  have  insisted  on  bury- 
ing Swinburne  in  the  Abbey,  were  it  only  for  his  high 
idealism  of  character;  but  English  authority  was  too 
ignorant,  Its  temper  too  conventional,  and,  after  all, 
it  is  perhaps  as  well  that  this  flaming  eager  spirit 
should  not  be  housed  with  second-rate  politicians  and 
actors.  I  like  to  think  of  Shakespeare  in  the  little 
church  at  Stratford  and  of  Swinburne  down  there  at 
Bonchurch  in  ground  shaken  by  the  swing  and 
thunder  of  the  long  rollers.  Great  men  should  be 
alone  in  death  as  in  life,  and  no  better  resting-place 
could  be  found  for  Swinburne  than  the  seashore 
where  he  had  played  as  a  boy. 

Did  he  not  write : 

But  when  my  time  shall  be, 
Oh^  Mother,  O  my  Sea, 
Alive  or  dead,  take  me. 
Me,  too,  my  Mother. 


TALKS  WITH  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

MANY  years  ago  I  gave  the  following  pen 
portrait  of  Matthew  Arnold,  and  almost 
immediately  after  received  a  number  of  letters  re- 
gretting that  I  had  not  written  at  greater  length 
about  him.  Some  of  my  correspondents  insisted  that 
Arnold  was  a  great  English  poet,  and  ought  to 
have  had  much  more  said  about  him,  or  else  nothing 
at  all.  Perhaps  they  were  right;  at  any  rate,  I  am 
inclined  to  follow  their  wishes  in  the  matter  and 
report  a  few  of  the  many  conversations  I  had  with 
Matthew  Arnold  in  the  ten  years  of  our  acquain- 
tance. I  shall  perhaps  be  forgiven  for  reproducing 
here  the  pen  and  ink  portrait  of  him  to  which  I 
allude  above.  I  called  him  the  latest  Apostle  to  the 
Gentiles. 

"A  tall  man,  who.  In  spite  of  slight  frame  and 
square  shoulders,  had  at  least  in  later  life  something 
of  the  scholar's  stoop.  A  rather  long,  pale,  brood- 
ing face,  hair  parted  in  the  middle  over  a  head  a 
little  too  flat  for  thoroughgoing  belief;  a  long,  well- 
shaped  nose — a  good  rudder — a  strong,  but  not  bony 
chin ;  altogether  a  well-balanced  face,  lighted  by  pale 
greyish  thoughtful  eyes.     Two  side  whiskers  lent 

240 


TALKS  WITH  MATTHEW  ARNOLD     241 

their  possessor  the  air  of  a  butler  of  a  good  house, 
the  shaven  lip  allowed  one  to  see  the  sinuous,  curv- 
ing lips  of  the  orator  or  poet. 

"He  believed  himself  to  be  both  a  poet  and  prose- 
writer  of  the  first  rank;  his  contemporaries  took  him 
at  his  own  valuation,  for  he  had  the  hall-mark  of 
Oxford  upon  him,  and  his  father  was  well  known; 
but  the  present  generation  is  inclined  to  question  his 
claims.  As  a  prose-writer  he  preached  too  much 
from  too  narrow  a  choice  of  texts,  and  he  was  rather 
a  poet  of  distilled  distinction  and  cultivation  than  of 
inspiration  or  passion. 

"By  intellect  shall  no  man  storm  Heaven:  the 
great  of  heart  alone  do  that,  and  the  passion-driven 
and  the  world-weary." 

I  had  met  Matthew  Arnold  here  and  there  a 
great  many  times  before  I  got  the  chance  of  a  good 
frank  talk  with  him ;  he  was  always  very  courteous, 
very  ingenuous  even;  he  never  shut  himself  up  in 
armored  politeness  as  Browning  usually  did:  he 
was  always  charmingly  open  and  frank,  like  a  well- 
bred  schoolboy.  Yet  somehow  or  other  I  had  no 
opportunity  of  a  long  talk  with  him  for  some  years. 
One  day  at  a  luncheon  party  the  whole  table  began 
discussing  Mr.  Rider  Haggard's  Jess,  which  had 
just  then  appeared,  and  Matthew  Arnold  was  asked 
to  give  his  opinion  of  it.  The  author  was  present, 
I  remember.  Matthew  Arnold  spoke  very  warmly 
of  the  pleasure  the  book  had  given  him,  and  the  in- 


242      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

terest  he  had  taken  in  it;  but  confessed  at  length  that 
he  hked  the  matter-of-fact  sister  better  than  he  hked 
Jess.  He  took,  in  fact,  a  quite  naive,  almost  boyish 
view  of  the  book.  As  the  party  broke  up  he  said  he 
would  like  to  speak  with  me  about  something,  and 
we  drove  together  to  the  Athenaeum  Club.  On  the 
way  I  asked  him  how  he  came  to  praise  Jess  so 
warmly.  His  praise  had  astonished  me  I  confessed, 
as  the  book  had  no  weight  or  place  in  letters;  all  of 
which  to  my  astonishment  he  admitted  at  once  with 
a  certain  amused  carelessness. 

"Why  then  did  you  praise  the  book?"  I  asked. 

"I  feel,"  he  replied,  "that  an  old  fellow  should  be 
very  sympathetic  to  the  young  writers,  even  if  they 
are  not  all  Thackerays  and  Fieldings.  Can  we  ex- 
pect giants  always,  or  should  we  not  rather  be  thank- 
ful for  what  we  get?  Jess  is  a  good  healthy  book 
enough,  schoolboyish,  as  you  say;  but  then  we  Eng- 
lish rather  like  schoolboy  fiction.  Robinson  Crusoe 
and  To7n  Jones  are  both  rather  boyish,  and  David 
Copperfield,  Is  that  profound?"  and  he  smiled  at  me 
deprecatingly. 

"Forgive  me,"  I  replied,  "as  you  praised  the  book 
out  of  kindness  I  have  nothing  to  say.  But  you 
know  the  young  ones  hope  always  that  their  seniors 
will  rise  to  the  height  of  every  argument  with  some 
great  word  of  exact  appreciation.  But  you  wanted 
to  ask  me  about  something,  you  said?" 

"I  wanted  to  ask  you,"  he  replied,  "about  a  quite 


TALKS  WITH  MATTHEW  ARNOLD     243 

personal  matter.  I  have  been  invited  to  lecture  in 
America.  I  should  very  much  like  to  do  it;  partly 
perhaps  from  vanity,  chiefly  I  think  because  the 
terms  offered  me  are  very  good.  But  I  should  not 
like  to  make  a  fiasco  of  it.  You  know  America  in- 
timately; I  was  wondering  if  you  could  tell  me 
whether  I  should  be  hkely  to  succeed  or  to  fail.  Be- 
lieve me,  I  am  not  asking  in  order  to  be  flattered: 
I  really  should  like  to  know  before  I  make  up  my 
mind  whether  to  go  or  stay.  Your  opinion  will 
have  weight  with  me." 

"It  is  delightfully  flattering  of  you,"  I  replied,  "to 
ask  for  my  opinion.  But,  as  you  have  asked  me,  I 
can  only  tell  you  the  plain  unvarnished  truth.  There 
are  a  few  people  in  every  city  in  America,  and  even 
in  some  towns,  who  will  know  you  before  they  see 
you,  who  will  be  able  to  understand  and  appreciate 
the  best  you  can  give  them;  but  they  are  so  few,  these 
chosen  ones,  so  few,  that  they  are  utterly  swamped 
by  the  masses  of  people  who  will  come  to  see  you 
because  they  have  heard  from  others  that  you  are 
a  great  poet,  a  great  English  poet,  too,  and  they 
will  flock  to  hear  you  and  measure  you  by  their 
standard,  which  is  not  yours  at  all.  They  will  judge 
you  primarily  as  an  orator  or  rather  as  a  public 
speaker.  Is  your  voice  resonant  and  good,  your  de- 
livery clear  and  strong?  if  so  they  will  say  you  are 
'magnetic,'  and  will  be  prepared  to  believe  that  you 
are  a  great  man;  but  if  your  delivery  is  halting  and 


244      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

slow  and  your  elocution  faulty,  they  will  probably  go 
away  to  make  lewd  jests  about  you ;  in  matters  of  art 
they  are  barbarians." 

"Goodness  me,"  he  exclaimed,  "you  frighten  me. 
I  have  no  elocution  whatever:  I  even  read  my  own 
poetry  very  badly,  I  believe.  I  remember  my  wife 
used  to  say  to  me,  'I  cannot  bear  to  hear  you  read 
your  verses,  Matthew,  you  do  mouth  them  so.'  I  am 
afraid,"  he  went  on,  laughing  heartily  at  the  remi- 
niscence, "I  am  afraid,  you  know,  that  all  poets  are 
inclined  to  lay  too  much  stress  upon  the  metrical 
quality  of  their  poetry.  I  have  noticed  that  actors 
usually  slur  over  the  metrical  quality  and  accentuate 
the  sense.     Is  that  what  you  call  good  elocution?" 

"It  Is  what  the  average  American  calls  good  elo- 
cution," I  said,  "which  is  more  to  the  point.  Per- 
sonally, I  prefer  whatever  is  peculiar.  Individual, 
characteristic." 

"I  see,"  he  said,  as  if  thinking  over  it,  "I  see. 
You  don't  think  then  that  I  should  be  a  success  in 
America?" 

"A  success  with  the  few,  certainly,"  I  replied, 
"but  not  with  the  many,  certainly  not  with  the  many 
unless  you  practise  elocution  vigorously  before  start- 
ing." 

"It  frightens  me,"  he  said,  "It  seems  a  little  ter- 
rifying." 

"But  surely,"  I  went  on,  "you  never  thought  you 
would  be  a  popular  success  in  America;  you  would 


TALKS  WITH  MATTHEW  ARNOLD     245 

not  be  a  popular  success  in  London,  where  the  so- 
ciety Is  aristocratic,  where  the  masses  take  their  tone 
from  the  few,  where  popular  opinion  Is  formed  from 
above,  like  water  on  sand,  which  as  it  sinks  spreads 
over  ever-widening  strata.  Even  in  our  aristocratic 
society  you  would  be  above  the  heads  of  all  but  the 
best  of  your  audiences.  How  can  you  hope  to  be 
popular?  Your  appeal  is  to  the  future,  and  not  to 
the  present." 

"It  is  very  kind  of  you  to  put  It  In  that  way,"  he 
said,  "and  perhaps  true;  still,  it  disappoints  one  a 
little.  I  am  afraid,  though,  you  are  right,"  he  added, 
after  a  pause,  "nevertheless,  I  think  you  have  de- 
cided me  to  go,"  and  he  began  to  laugh,  "perhaps 
for  the  sake  of  that  remnant  you  speak  of  who  will 
understand  and  appreciate." 

"Oh,  yes,"  I  replied  warmly,  "a  remnant  that 
will  understand  you  better,  I  am  inclined  to  believe, 
than  you  are  understood  even  In  England.  Only 
they  will  make  no  sign:  you  will  hardly  know  that 
they  are  among  your  audience ;  but  they  will  be  there 
eager  to  see  and  hear  the  man  who  wrote  'Thyrsis' 
and  'The  Scholar-Gipsy'  and  'Dover'  and  a  dozen 
other  splendid  things." 

I  remember  another  talk  just  after  he  had  writ- 
ten a  poem  on  a  dog — an  exquisite  requiem — for 
The  Fortnightly  Review.  I  went  to  ask  him  to  write 
mc  an  appreciation  of  Ernest  Renan,  whom  I  had 


246      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

met  and  had  had  long  talks  with  In  the  College  de 
France. 

"I  see  you  have  divined  It,"  said  Matthew  Ar- 
nold, "divined  that  Renan  was  always  my  teacher; 
my  teacher  in  the  view  he  took  of  St.  Paul  and  the 
Bible  generally,  though  to  me  he  seemed  a  little  su- 
perficial in  his  treatment  of  Jesus.  But  a  great 
teacher,  nevertheless,  a  man  who  appealed  to  the 
soul  always.  He  was  the  first,  too,  to  discover  for 
us  the  Celtic  genius.    A  great  writer!" 

I  felt  inclined  to  ask  him  why  he  had  never  ad- 
mitted in  print  the  greatness  of  his  debt  to  Renan, 
but  thought  it  more  courteous  to  restrain  myself. 

On  another  occasion  Arnold  showed,  I  thought,  a 
distinct  vein  of  humor. 

"You  know,"  he  said,  "it  is  very  funny  to  me — 
years  ago  when  I  wrote  prose  all  the  editors  whom 
I  knew  used  to  say  to  me: 

"  'Oh,  Arnold,  why  don't  you  write  poetry?' 

"And  now  as  soon  as  I  begin  writing  poetry  you 
say  to  me : 

"  'Oh,  Arnold,  why  don't  you  write  prose?'  "  and 
he  laughed  heartily  at  the  implied  criticism. 

After  his  return  from  America  I  wrote  asking 
him  to  write  something  for  me,  and  then  went  to 
see  him  in  order  to  urge  him  to  contribute. 

"Don't  ask  me!"  he  cried,  "don't  ask  me.  I  will 
not  write  articles;  America  has  saved  me  from  that; 
it  has  given  me  money  and  made  me  independent, 


TALKS  WITH  MATTHEW  ARNOLD     247 

that  much  I  owe  it.  But  you  were  quite  right  about 
the  audiences.  The  remnant  is  utterly  swamped  by 
the  vulgar  opinion  of  the  mass.  What  an  opinion! 
What  a  mass!  What  a  civilization!  Almost  it 
makes  one  despair  of  humanity.  The  vulgarity  of 
them  doesn't  frighten  one  as  much  as  their  intensity 
— the  energy,  force,  and  tumult  of  them  all 
rushing — whither?  It  frightens  me  to  think  of 
America." 

One  can  hardly  help  asking:  Was  Matthew  Ar- 
nold a  great  poet;  one  of  the  fixed  stars  in  the  lit- 
erary heaven;  will  he  live  there  with  Browning  and 
Swinburne  and  Tennyson?  He  thought  he  would; 
declared,  indeed,  more  than  once,  that  his  future 
place  was  at  least  as  well  assured  as  theirs. 

''Tennyson  has  no  ideas,"  he  would  say,  "Brown- 
ing's genius  is  almost  hidden  by  scoriae;  my  little 
things  are  slight  if  you  will,  but  surely  they  are  of 
gold — seven  times  refined." 

Arnold  was  mistaken  in  this  self-estimate,  alto- 
gether mistaken,  I  believe.  He  was  right  in  many 
things;  his  opinions  on  matters  of  the  day  and  hour 
were  usually  worth  hearing;  he  was  an  excellent  jour- 
nalist, the  best  indeed  of  his  time;  but  hardly  more 
than  that;  to  the  last  he  remained  a  sort  of  smaller 
Renan,  Renan  at  second-hand,  a  puritanic  Renan. 
He  brought  no  new  and  fruitful  ideas  into  life;  he 
created  no  new  types;  he  is  scarcely  more  than  a 


248      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

graceful  singer  of  commonplaces.  Sometimes,  when 
looking  at  him,  I  thought  he  was  a  Jew;  there  was 
surely  Hebrew  blood  In  his  veins;  at  any  rate,  his 
deepest  words  are  about  religion  and  the  life  of  the 
spirit: 

The  sea  of  faith 

Was  once^  too,  at  the  full,  and  round  earth's  shore 

Lay  like  the  folds  of  a  bright  girdle  furl'd. 

But  now  I  only  hear 

Its  melancholy,  long,  withdrawing  roar. 

Retreating  to  the  breath 

Of  the  night-wind,  down  the  vast  edges  drear, 

And  naked  shingles  of  the  world. 

He  had  no  Inkling  that  the  tide  of  faith  was  al- 
ready on  the  turn  and  would  soon  be  again  at  flood. 

Matthew  Arnold  as  Critic 

Since  writing  of  Arnold's  poetry  and  person  I 
have  found  myself  plagued  by  his  critical  prose  work, 
and  must  at  all  costs  try  to  rid  my  soul  of  the  unholy 
obsession.  I  think  I  may  dismiss  his  critical  writ- 
ings on  religion  and  on  politics  without  more  ado. 
His  views  on  religion  were  taken  from  Renan  and 
"Bayswatered"  down  to  suit  English  taste  with 
cheap  English  puritanic  prejudices  altogether  un- 
worthy of  a  master.  His  views  on  politics  were  even 
more  superficial  and  vain, though  he  said  things  about 


TALKS  WITH  MATTHEW  ARNOLD     249 

the  middle  and  lower  classes  in  England  which  are  as 
witty  as  they  are  true.  But  his  best  things  in  this 
field  were  all  borrowed  from  Heine  and  he  took 
care  not  to  sponsor  any  significant  part  of  Heine's 
tremendous  indictment  of  the  British  oligarchy  and 
British  laws.  One  doubts  whether  he  was  capable 
even  of  appreciating  its  power  and  pertinence. 

Inasmuch  as  Arnold  was  first  and  last  a  man  of 
letters,  one  is  surely  doing  him  no  disservice  by  treat- 
ing his  literary  judgments  alone. 

It  is  curious  to  notice  that  even  his  conceit  has 
some  relation  to  his  power  as  the  shadow  has 
some  resemblance  to  the  figure.  He  thought  far  too 
highly  of  his  own  academic  poetry;  but,  after  all,  he 
only  compared  himself  with  his  contemporaries;  he 
overestimated  his  critical  faculty  extravagantly,  but 
he  was  careful  to  avoid  the  supreme  tests.  We  must 
not  look  to  him  for  any  revision  of  the  secular  judg- 
ments of  Homer  or  Dante  or  Shakespeare.  He  will 
quote  Isolated  lines  of  Homer  and  Dante  and  extol 
their  beauty;  but  the  passages  he  selects  are  usually 
bethumbed  passages,  or  moral  aphorisms  seldom 
startling  or  significant,  and  when  he  laments  "the 
Imperfections  of  Shakespeare"  In  comparison  with 
"the  perfection  of  Homer,"  we  are  fain  to  forgive 
the  absurdity,  though  It  was  a  characteristic  aberra- 
tion of  the  schoolmaster.  As  a  rule  he  approaches 
the  gods  on  his  knees  with  becoming  reverence. 

With  the  same  Instinctive  shrinking  he  avoids  the 


250      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

highest  function  of  criticism  in  his  own  time ;  no  new 
star  ever  swims  Into  his  ken;  he  does  not  affect  the 
rapture  of  discovery.  He  would  never  praise  Victor 
Hugo  as  Swinburne  dared  to  praise  him:  so  far  as 
I  know  he  never  even  discusses  Balzac  or  Blake, 
and  when  he  talks  of  Milton  or  Goethe  he  only  ven- 
tures a  cursive  commentary  on  Scherer's  well-known 
judgments. 

But  about  the  writers  of  the  second  or  third  mag- 
nitude he  has  much  to  say,  and  what  he  has  to  say 
he  says  on  the  whole  excellently  well,  so  well  In- 
deed, with  such  measure,  such  lightness  of  touch  and 
humorous  felicity,  that  one  loves  to  listen  to  him 
and  applaud  him.  It  seems  unkind  to  find  fault  with 
so  agreeable  a  guide,  who  has  been  at  such  pains 
to  cultivate  amiable  manners.  But,  after  all,  as 
Matthew  Arnold  himself  knew,  "the  disinterested 
reader  will  have  truth,"  and  one  ought  not  to  be 
"satisfied  with  fine  writing  about  the  object  of  one's 
study";  it  is  indeed  our  "business  to  learn  the  real 
truth  about  the  Important  men  and  things  and  books 
which  Interest  the  human  mind."  What,  then,  is 
the  truth  about  Matthew  Arnold  and  his  critical 
faculty? 

Let  us  try  to  take  a  test  case  that  shall  be  favor- 
able to  him,  the  case  of  some  poet  who  has  been 
misrated  and  misunderstood;  let  us  not  take  Ver- 
lalne,  whom  he  never  seems  to  have  noticed,  nor 
Heine,  where  his  cruel  misjudging  may  be  attributed 


TALKS  WITH  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  251" 

in  part  at  least  to  his  insufficient  knowledge  of  Ger- 
man; but  let  us  talce  Keats,  Keats  who  was  of  the 
preceding  generation,  Keats  who  died  at  twenty-six, 
whom  he  should,  therefore,  one  would  think,  have 
been  able  to  see  fairly  and  to  classify  with  precision. 
The  task  was  not  difficult.  Browning  finds  a  magical 
word  with  which  to  praise  him — "Keats,  him  even !"  : 
Tennyson,  whose  want  of  intelligence  Arnold  de- 
plored, declared  that  Keats  lived  "in  the  very  heart 
of  poetry";  what  will  Matthew  Arnold  say  of 
Keats? 

He  starts  w^ell  by  accepting  Milton's  famous  say- 
ing that  poetry  should  be  "simple,  sensuous,  impas- 
sioned." None  of  us  can  wish  a  better  judgment 
on  Keats  than  must  result  from  such  a  measure.  But 
to  our  astonishment  after  borrowing  a  fine  criterion, 
Matthew  Arnold  goes  on  at  once  to  take  exception 
to  Keats's  "sensuousness" :  was  he  "anything  more 
than  sensuous"?  he  asks.  Keats's  poetry  does  not 
furnish  him  with  any  example  of  excessive  sensuous- 
ness, and  therefore  he  takes  the  Letters  to  Fanny 
Brawne,  though  Keats  is  assuredly  to  be  judged  by 
his  poetry  and  by  his  poetry  alone,  and  not  by  love- 
letters  thrown  off  in  the  heat  of  passionate  youthful 
ardor.  It  would  be  as  unfair  to  judge  Keats  by 
these  letters  as  to  judge  Goethe  by  his  letters  written 
to  Frau  von  Stein.  But  let  us  follow  our  guide.  He 
declares  that  he  sees  "no  reason  whatever"  for  the 
publication  of  these  letters:  "they  ought  never  to 


252      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

have  been  published" :  a  fortiori,  therefore,  they 
should  not  be  discussed  by  a  critic  who  takes  his 
work  seriously.  But  that  would  not  suit  your  Purl- 
tan:  Arnold  has  discovered,  he  thinks,  a  dish  that  is 
rather  "high";  he  cannot  resist  the  temptation  to 
taste  it,  to  roll  It  on  his  tongue,  to  savor  It  to  the 
full  before  rejecting  It,  and  thus  at  one  and  the  same 
moment  enjoy  the  sin  and  the  condemnation  of  It. 
No  more  perfect  example  of  hypocrisy  could  be  de- 
sired! 

But,  after  all,  what  has  Matthew  Arnold  found? 
Here  are  the  worst  passages  he  can  discover  in 
Keats's  letters: 

You  have  absorbed  me.  ...  I  have  no  limit  now  to 
my  love.  ...  I  have  been  astonished  that  men  should  die 
martyrs  for  religion — I  have  shuddered  at  it.  I  shudder 
no  more.  I  could  be  martyred  for  my  Religion — Love  is 
my  religion.  ...  I  cannot  breathe  without  you. 

Now  what  on  earth  is  there  to  take  exception  to  In 
this?  There  Is  nothing  here  which  hasn't  been  said 
by  Shakespeare  and  Dante  and  Goethe;  much  more 
sensuous  stuff  was  written  in  the  Song  of  Solomon, 
consecrated  by  the  admiration  of  a  hundred  genera- 
tions; a  still  more  sensual  because  solely  physical,  ap- 
peal was  made  by  Chaucer,  whom  Matthew  Arnold 
praises  for  "health  and  sanity." 

But  Chaucer  lived  a  long  time  ago,  and  is  there- 
fore sacred,  while  Keats  is  almost  of  his  own  time, 


TALKS  WITH  MATTHEW  ARNOLD     253 

so  Matthew  Arnold  whips  him  with  the  sad  in- 
feriority of  his  tepid  temperament.  Here  we  have 
"the  merely  sensuous  man,"  he  cries,  "the  man  who 
is  'passion's  slave.'  "  He  uses  the  Shakespearean 
phrase  without  any  inkling  of  the  fact  that  Shake- 
speare has  given  a  thousand  proofs  that  he  was  more 
enslaved  by  passion  than  ever  Keats  was.  Matthew 
Arnold,  then,  allows  himself  to  talk  of  this  letter 
as  "the  love-letter  of  a  surgeon's  apprentice."  .  .  . 
"It  has  in  its  relaxed  self-abandonment,"  he  writes, 
"something  underbred  and  ignoble,  as  of  a  youth 
ill-brought  up  !"  No  wonder  Heine  wanted  to  leave 
England  in  order  to  get  quit  of  its  "gentlemen,  and 
live  with  unpretentious  fools  and  rogues." 

This  snobbish  and  vicious  nonsense  does  not  stand 
alone  in  Matthew  Arnold's  work,  or  I  should  have 
striven  for  pity's  sake  to  forget  it.  Puritan  preju- 
dice and  English  propriety  debase  and  degrade  all 
Arnold's  critical  work.  He  regrets  the  publication  of 
Dowden's  Life  of  Shelley:  he  does  not  "want  the 
truth  about  Shelley's  passion,"  though  he  assures  us 
again  and  again  that  "truth,  the  real  truth,"  is  what 
"the  disinterested  reader"  demands. 

Even  this  disgraceful  priggish  "underbred"  and 
"ill-brought  up"  has  its  parallel  elsewhere.  Mat- 
thew Arnold  writes  from  Paris  that  he  has  come 
across  a  new  poet,  one  Heine,  who  "apes  the  bit- 
ter scepticism  and  world-weariness  of  Byron,"  but 
then  Byron  is  an  English  lord,  and  has  the  right, 


254      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

Matthew  thinks,  to  feel  disgust  with  ordinary  life 
— "Byron  had  the  entree  everywhere."  And  so  we 
find  mixed  with  Puritan  prejudice  and  English 
hypocrisy  the  essential  oil,  so  to  speak,  of  British 
snobbery.  Nurtured  in  early  Victorian  gentility, 
Matthew  Arnold  does  not  like  the  word  "snob." 
Scherer  gives  Instances  of  Goethe's  extraordinary 
"snobbishness"  (It  is  the  very  perfume  of  Germanic 
vulgarity!),  but  Matthew  Arnold  will  not  have  the 
word:  he  calls  it  "caporalism'''  striving  fatuously  to 
disguise  the  rank  odor  with  a  ridiculous  neologism. 

Matthew  Arnold  could  never  have  been  a  great 
critic,  but  he  might  surely  have  reached  somewhat 
the  same  level  as  Swinburne  had  not  English  Puri- 
tanism debased  his  judgment  and  destroyed  his  in- 
tellectual honesty. 

He  condemns  Faust  as  a  "seduction  drama," 
though  he  praises  Sophocles  without  measure  in 
spite  of  the  Greek's  parricides  and  Incest.  He  takes 
poor  Burns  as  mentor,  and  asserts  that  passion 
"petrifies  the  feeling,"  though  he  himself  has  writ- 
ten: 

Ere  the  parting  kiss  be  dry 
Quick,  thy  tablets.  Memory ! 

He  cannot  even  select  the  great  lines  in  Dante, 
the  "simple,  sensuous,  impassioned"  lines,  but  praises 
beyond  measure  such  a  copy-book  headline  as 

In  la  tua  volimtade  e  nostra  pace. 


TALKS  WITH  MATTHEW  ARNOLD     255 

He  Is  curiously  typical  of  the  English  middle-class 
in  his  hatred  of  simple,  sensuous,  impassioned  poetry 
such  as  Heine's  and  his  ready  acceptance  of  the 
rhymed  rhetoric  and  coarse  animalism  of  Byron. 
But,  after  all,  he  is  best  seen  in  his  treatment  of 
Keats  and  Milton.  He  condemns  Macaulay's  Essay 
on  Milton  not  alone  for  "redundance  of  youthful 
enthusiasm,"  as  Mr.  Trevelyan  condemns  it;  but 
because  "the  writer  has  not  for  his  aim  to  see  and 
to  utter  the  real  truth  about  his  object."  He  finds 
his  master,  Scherer,  declaring  with  much  justice  that 
"The  Paradise  Lost"  Is  "a  sort  of  'tertiary'  forma- 
tion, the  copy  of  a  copy,  wholly  factitious  ...  a 
false  poem,  a  grotesque  poem,  a  tiresome  poem 
.  .  .  but  immortal  ...  it  will  be  read  for  Incom- 
parable lines." 

Matthew  Arnold  knows  that  the  true  judgment 
on  Milton  is  even  severer  than  Scherer's :  he  knows 
that  it  is  English  Puritanism  which  ruined  Milton's 
poetry;  he  even  says  so  once — "they  (the  Puri- 
tans) spoiled  him,"  but  he  shuts  his  eyes  to  the  truth. 
He  is  resolved  to  praise  Milton,  and  he  praises 
him  for  "elevation  of  style,"  and  is  not  ashamed  to 
say  that  his  elevation  of  style  is  due  to  "a  moral 
quahty  in  him — his  pureness."  There  we  have  it: 
the  English  Puritan  is  to  be  tickled  at  any  cost,  even 
of  truth.  For  whence  comes  the  "elevation"  of 
Shakespeare  or  the  elevation  of  Sophocles  or  the 


256      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

elevation  of  Goethe  or  of  Ecclesiastes  or  of  the 
Psalms?     Certainly  not  from  "pureness." 

Had  it  not  been  for  his  debasing  Puritanism  Mat- 
thew Arnold  must  have  told  the  truth  that  Keats, 
though  handicapped  by  poverty,  illness,  and  untimely 
death,  stands  higher  as  a  poet  than  Milton,  that  he 
has  shown  a  nobler  spirit,  and  has  left  a  richer 
legacy  mainly  because  he  was  not  degraded  by  Puri- 
tan falsehoods  and  by  the  childish  Puritan  miscon- 
ceptions both  of  God  and  man. 

Poor  Matthew  Arnold,  how  heavily  handicapped 
he  was  by  birth,  how  ill-brought  up!  The  son  of  a 
schoolmaster-cleric  of  the  strictest  sect  of  British 
Pharisee!  True,  he  had  an  extraordinary  endow- 
ment; he  was  gifted  with  a  French  mind,  French 
lucidity  of  vision,  French  amiability  and  urbanity, 
and,  above  all,  with  something  of  a  Frenchman's 
high  conscience  In  all  Intellectual  and  artistic  mat- 
ters, but,  alas,  the  Bad  Fairy  condemned  the  charm- 
ing little  fellow  to  be  born  In  an  English  upper-mid- 
dle-class home,  and  so  he  was  trained  painfully  to 
be  a  sort  of  pinchbeck  Wordsworth. 

It  needs,  as  Arnold  himself  once  said,  "a  miracle 
of  genius"  like  Shakespeare  to  grow  comparatively 
straight  and  high  in  such  an  atmosphere. 


GUY    DE    MAUPASSANT  1 

MY  memory  almost  Invariably  connects  per- 
sons by  likeness  or  by  contrast — for  exam- 
ple, I  think  of  Emerson  and  Nietzsche  together  as 
opposltes,  while  Maupassant  and  Kipling  resemble 
each  other,  though  the  talent  of  the  one  Is  peculiarly 
French  and  the  talent  of  the  other  peculiarly  Eng- 
lish. Both  are  born  story-tellers  of  the  first  class, 
though  characteristically  enough  the  domain  of  the 
Frenchman  Is  love,  whereas  the  domain  of  the  Eng- 
lishman Is  war.  Both  have  written  masterpieces. 
La  Maison  Tellier  and  L'Heritage  are  even  finer 
than  The  Maji  Who  IVould  he  King  or  The  Drums 
of  the  Fore  and  Aft.  Both  men  came  to  Immediate 
popularity,  which  means  that  both  were  on  the  or- 
dinary level  of  thought  and  feeling,  and  wrote  for 
ordinary  men  and  women.  The  man  in  the  street 
in  Paris  and  In  London  finds  himself  in  Maupassant 
and  in  Kipling;  he  has  the  same  outlook,  the  same 
vague  creed,  the  same  hopes  and  fears,  the  same 
simple  Imperative  instinct  to  achieve  his  own  well- 
being  and  that  of  his   country.     Both  men  might 

^Souvenirs  sur  Guy  de  Maupassant  (1883-1893).     By  Francois, 
his  Valet  de  Chambre.     (Plon-Xourrit  and  Co.,  Paris.) 

2S7 


258      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

have  been  born  three  hundred  years  ago,  for  neither 
has  had  anything  to  do  with  the  thought-currents 
pecuHar  to  our  time.  There  is,  too,  a  curious  phys- 
ical resemblance:  de  Maupassant,  like  Kipling,  was 
short  and  broad  and  strong,  and  so  ordinary-looking 
that  it  is  difficult  to  make  the  reader  see  him  by 
means  of  words.  He  was  a  Norman  by  descent, 
lumpy-shouldered,  large-limbed;  the  oval  of  the 
face  rather  long;  features  regular;  hair  dark  brown 
and  thick;  eyes  greyish-blue.  He  would  have  passed 
unnoticed,  save  that  he  was  handsome,  in  any  Euro- 
pean crowd.  If  you  studied  his  looks  you  could 
see  no  trace  of  exceptional  endowment,  save  per- 
haps something  searching  in  the  regard,  a  certain 
sensitiveness  in  the  well-cut  lips  and  in  the  refine- 
ment of  small  hands.  De  Maupassant,  like  Kip- 
ling, was  healthy,  courteous,  well-mannered;  both 
were  made  social  lions;  but  de  Maupassant  allowed 
himself  to  be  swept  away  by  the  current,  whereas 
Kipling  in  this  respect  seems  stronger.  Both  men 
got  the  best  out  of  themselves;  but  Kipling  had  the 
longer  wind,  though  the  Frenchman  plunged  deeper 
into  life.  De  Maupassant,  like  Kipling,  met  you 
fairly,  and,  while  conscious  of  his  achievements,  was 
well  aware,  too,  of  some,  at  any  rate,  of  his  limita- 
tions— in  fine,  two  ordinary  healthy  men,  rather 
under  than  over  middle  height,  gifted  with  an  ex- 
traordinary writer's  talent.  Both  men,  like  Franz 
Hals,  depicted  the  life  which  they  saw  and  lived 


GUY  DE  MAUPASSANT  259 

with  marvellous  verisimilitude,  making  of  ordinary 
men  unforgettable  portraits — portraits  that  live  In 
the  memory  like  photographs  transmuted  into  pic- 
tures by  an  Incomparable  brio  of  presentment. 

This  book  of  de  Maupassant's  valet  ought  to 
have  been  a  masterpiece,  for  It  deals  with  the  last 
ten  years  of  the  great  writer's  brief  life;  it  covers 
all  his  best  work  and  the  appalling  tragedy  which 
brought  his  life  and  labor  to  an  untimely  and  hor- 
rible end.  The  valet  Francois  witnessed  the  trag- 
edy; lived  through  It,  Indeed,  from  the  first  scene  to 
the  last;  but  he  saw  It  and  understood  It  without  re- 
alizing its  universal  significance  or  putting  it  before 
us  so  that  we  too  must  realize  It  and  the  lesson  of 
it.  His  book,  therefore.  Is  not  an  unique  book — 
hardly,  indeed,  a  valuable  book.  There  Is  no  pro- 
portion In  It,  no  sense  at  all  of  the  relative  impor- 
tance of  events.  Hundreds  of  pages  are  filled  with 
trivialities:  the  furnishing  of  rooms,  journeyings  In 
France,  Algeria,  and  Tunis,  yachting  excursions, 
dinners,  feeble  practical  jokes  and  ordinary  distrac- 
tions, which  are  interrupted  by  alarming  hints  of 
recurring  Illness  always  connected  In  some  mysteri- 
ous way  with  the  visits  of  a  "dame  a  la  robe  gris 
perle";  then  suddenly  comes  the  confession  of  de 
Maupassant  himself,  who  tells  of  unstrung,  dis- 
cordant nerves — and  "malaise  Indicible."  There 
follows  a  casual  description  of  the  slow  partial  re- 
covery; then  another  visit  of  the  lady  whom  Fran- 


26o      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

qois  now  calls  the  "Vampire,"  and  a  day  or  two 
later  de  Maupassant  worn  to  a  rag,  cuts  his  throat 
in  a  frenzy,  and  ends  his  life  in  a  madhouse — "En- 
core un  homme  au  rancart,"  as  he  cried  himself  In 
characteristic  bitter  modern  phrase;  or  as  one  might 
English  it — "Another  carcass  for  the  dust-heap." 

Here  is  tragedy  enough  to  fill  a  volume  with  won- 
der and  regret  and  pity;  the  poor  gifted,  passionate, 
foolish,  human  being  in  the  toils  of  necessity,  a  slave 
of  his  own  passion,  which  to  him  is  inexorable  fate: 

Who  shall  contend  with  his  lords. 

Or  cross  them  or  do  them  wrong? 

Who  shall  bind  them  as  with  cords? 
Who  shall  tame  them  as  with  song? 
For  the  hands  of  their  kingdom  are  strong. 

In  truth  "the  hands  of  their  kingdom  are  strong." 
But  there  is  hardly  more  than  a  hint  of  the  astound- 
ing and  awful  tragedy  in  this  book,  hardly  more 
than  a  suggestion  anywhere  of  de  Maupassant's 
trial  as  with  fire  and  his  utter  incredible  breakdown. 
Frangois  appears  never  to  have  seen  much  more  than 
the  outside  of  his  master,  and  that,  as  I  have  said, 
was  commonplace  enough;  but  de  Maupassant's 
temperament  was  abnormal  and  deserves  a  careful 
and  sympathetic  study. 

In  order  to  give  my  readers  an  adequate  compre- 
hension of  de  Maupassant's  passionate  endowment, 
or  the  strength  of  his  temptation,  or  the  horror  of 


GUY  DE  MAUPASSANT  261 

the  tragedy,  I  should  have  to  use  plain  words,  and 
that  is  impossible  in  any  English  book.  The  tragedy 
is  there,  and  the  lesson  flamed  out  in  letters  of  fire; 
but  the  purblind  British  Puritans  have  unanimously 
decided  that  the  ostrich  policy  is  the  most  becoming 
and  fitting  policy  for  English  writers,  and  we  poor 
scribes  are  forced  to  bow  to  their  infallible  dicta- 
tion. "Little  Mary"  we  may  write  about,  it  ap- 
pears, and  "our  obligations  to  our  betters,"  and 
"our  duties  in  that  state  of  life  into  which  it  has 
pleased  God  to  call  us";  but  the  great  human  prob- 
lems are  not  to  be  discussed  by  us;  truth  holds  no 
sanctuary  for  us,  but  for  the  free  peoples  and  their 
teachers,  for  the  Sudermanns  and  Brieux  and 
Artzibacheffs  and  d'Annunzios,  but  not  for  the 
Grundy-ridden  descendants  of  Shakespeare  and 
Bacon. 

But  to  return  to  my  text.  If  Francois  the  valet 
has  shown  himself  unable  to  depict  his  brilliant  mas- 
ter, if  he  has  not  attempted  to  rise  to  the  height  of 
the  great  argument  and  justify  the  ways  of  God  to 
men,  he  has  incidentally  painted  himself  as  the  very 
model  of  a  wise  and  kindly  valet,  as  a  very  honest, 
humble,  reverent,  human  soul,  and  has  besides  re- 
produced de  Maupassant's  daily  life  for  us,  and 
given  us  little  sketches  of  de  Maupassant's  mother 
and  some  of  his  friends  which  are  immediately 
recognizable.  This  leads  me  to  fear  that  because  1 
knew  de  Maupassant  intimately  I  am  inclined  to  be 


262      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

a  little  unjust  to  this  book,  which  does  after  all  per- 
haps in  a  degree  make  up  for  the  want  of  personal 
knowledge,  and  does  supply  some  of  those  little 
personal  peculiarities  which  bring  the  man  before  us 
in  his  habit  as  he  lived.  Moreover,  there  are  in 
this  book  a  few  pages  of  high  interest  in  which 
de  Maupassant  reveals  himself,  or  at  least  his  mind, 
to  us  at  its  best.  I  make  no  apology  for  transcrib- 
ing those  which  I  regard  as  worthful  and  charac- 
teristic. 

I  was  introduced  to  de  Maupassant  by  Blanche 
Macchetta,  an  exceedingly  fair  American  with  mag- 
nificent red  hair,  who  figures  in  the  first  pages  of 
this  book  as  "the  author  of  several  novels"  and  "as 
intelligent  as  she  was  beautiful."  We  dined  to- 
gether, and  de  Maupassant  took  away  my  breath  by 
declaring  that  he  hated  writing  and  only  whipped 
himself  to  the  work  by  thoughts  of  the  money  he 
would  make  and  the  pleasant  yachting  trips  which 
the  money  would  buy  for  him :  Pegasus  only  valu- 
able as  a  grocer's  nag.  To  Francois  he  confesses 
that  this  is  not  the  whole  truth,  not  even  the  best 
part  of  the  truth,  "There  are  in  France  some  fifty 
thousand  young  men  of  good  birth  and  fairly  well 
off,"  he  says,  "who  are  encouraged  to  live  a  life  of 
complete  Idleness.  They  must  either  cease  to  exist 
or  must  come  to  see  that  there  can  be  no  happiness, 
no  health  even,  without  regular  daily  labor  of  some 
sort.  .  .  .  The  need  of  work  is  in  me,"  he  con- 


GUY  DE  MAUPASSANT  263 

eludes.  "As  soon  as  I  have  finished  all  the  novels 
and  short  stories  I  have  in  my  head  I  shall  write  a 
sort  of  general  analysis  of  my  works,  and  then  I'll 
review  all  the  great  writers  whom  I  think  I  have 
understood.  That  would  be  an  easy  piece  of  work 
for  me  and  of  great  interest  to  younger  writers. 
Besides,  it  would  delight  me  to  reread  again  all  the 
masters  who  have  afforded  me  intellectual  enjoy- 
ment." 

As  everyone  knows,  he  admired  Flaubert  more 
than  any  modern  writer;  he  used  to  speak  of  him 
as  his  spiritual  father,  and  insisted  that  after 
France  had  passed  through  a  dozen  revolutions  and 
had  forgotten  all  the  other  writers  of  the  time,  Flau- 
bert would  be  studied  as  a  classic,  as  one  "who 
had  lent  French  prose  divine  grace  and  harmony." 

De  Maupassant's  praise  of  other  writers  was 
often  astonishingly  generous.  Already,  in  '88,  he 
talked  of  Bourget  as  a  master,  and  of  Zola  as  "a 
great  writer  ...  a  considerable  literary  value," 
though  he  could  not  help  adding,  with  characteristic 
frankness,  "personally,  I  don't  like  the  man."  He 
did  not  like  his  work  either;  indeed  Zola's  method 
of  work  was  the  absolute  antithesis  to  his  own,  and 
If  we  consider  the  two  ways  we  shall  find  that  de 
Maupassant's  method  was  right,  and  Zola's  wrong. 
Here  is  the  comparison  as  recorded  by  Francois. 
First  of  all,  de  Maupassant  admits  that  "Zola  is  a 
relentless  workman,  wiUing  to  undergo  any  labor. 


264      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

He's  now  thinking  of  writing  a  novel  on  every  dif- 
ferent class  of  laborer.  But  a  man  of  real  talent 
oughtn't  to  do  that  sort  of  thing.  He  should  only 
write  what  he  has  felt,  what  he  has  seen  and  under- 
stood. I'd  go  even  further  and  say  he  should  only 
write  of  what  he  loves  and  of  what  he  hates,  of 
what  he  has  lived,  suffered  and  enjoyed.  I'm  not 
tempted  to  imitate  Zola."  It  was  well  for  him  that 
he  saw  so  truly,  felt  so  justly.  There  are  books  of 
Zola  which  are  mere  rubbish-heaps  of  industry, 
whereas  every  volume  of  de  Maupassant  is  worth 
reading. 

De  Maupassant  sometimes  forgot  his  own  pre- 
cepts. His  little  story,  "Les  Deux  Amis,"  made  a 
painful  impression  on  me.  It  tells  of  how  two  mid- 
dle-aged bourgeois  in  Paris  during  the  siege  of  '71 
went  out  on  a  fishing  expedition  in  the  Seine  heedless 
of  the  fact  that  they  were  beyond  their  own  lines. 
They  were  seized  by  a  small  German  detachment; 
the  officer  tried  to  wring  a  valuable  secret  from  them 
and  when  they  refused  to  betray  their  compatriots 
they  were  put  against  a  wall  and  summarily  shot  as 
spies.  And,  with  the  two  bodies  there  before  him, 
the  German  officer  tells  his  servant  to  take  the  catch 
of  fish  and  cook  it  for  his  dejeuner.  It  Is  a  brutal 
touch ;  the  pathos  of  the  story  being  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  two  Frenchmen  are  quite  helpless  and  harm- 
less. De  Maupassant,  I  found,  had  no  facts  to  go  on 
for  this  malevolent  fiction;  a  sorry  performance,  just 


GUY  DE  MAUPASSANT  265 

as  base  In  its  way  as  Kipling's  similar  attack  on  the 
Russians  for  having  tortured  and  flogged  a  British 
officer  who  had  fallen  into  their  hands.  Both  men 
seemingly  delighted  to  spread  hate  by  senseless 
slander. 

Before  leaving  this  book  I  must  give  some  idea  of 
de  Maupassant's  religious  beliefs,  for,  after  all,  it 
is  from  what  a  man  believes  about  this  life  and  the 
life  beyond  the  grave  that  we  get  his  truest  measure. 
He  did  not  talk  freely  on  such  matters,  even  to  his 
intimates.  The  death  of  his  brother,  however,  and 
a  visit  to  his  tomb,  stirred  him  to  speech,  and  the 
account  of  these  hesitating  and  partial  confessions 
are  the  most  interesting  pages  in  the  book.  De  Mau- 
passant was  particularly  self-centred  and  inaccessi- 
ble to  strangers;  but  his  family  affections  and  his 
rare  friendships  were  intensely  passionate  and  ten- 
der. His  mother  was  an  ideal  to  him,  and  he 
mourned  his  brother  as  one  who  would  not  be  com- 
forted. "I  saw  him  die,"  he  says.  "According  to 
the  doctors,  he  should  have  died  the  day  before;  but 
he  was  waiting  for  me  and  would  not  go  without  see- 
ing me  once  more  and  saying  'good-bye'  to  me  again. 
'Adieu  .    .   .  Au  revoir  peut-etre?  .    .   .  Qui  sait?'  " 

And  then  this  word  about  Jesus.  Pointing  to  the 
great  figure  of  the  Christ  outside  the  cemetery,  de 
Maupassant  said: 

"Surely  the  finest  intelligence  and  the  most  per- 
fect nature  ever  seen  on  earth  when  one  thinks  of 


266      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

all  He  did!  And  He  was  only  thirty-three  when 
they  crucified  Him!  .  .  .  Napoleon  I,  whom  I  ad- 
mire, though  only  for  his  genius,  said  of  Him:  'In. 
all  that  that  Man  did — God  or  not — there  Is  some- 
thing mysterious,  incomprehensible.  .   .  .'  " 

Yesterday  I  went  out  to  "Les  Ravenelles,"  his 
mother's  villa  in  Nice.  It  is  set  on  a  little  height 
behind  the  Rue  de  France,  and  here  de  Maupassant 
spent  that  ist  of  January,  1892,  his  last  day  on 
earth  as  a  man  among  men.  The  "Vampire"  in 
grey  silk  had  just  paid  him  another  visit  and  had 
left  him  drained  of  strength  and  hope,  exhausted, 
enerved,  panting.  In  spite  of  his  indescribable 
wretchedness  and  misery,  that  "malaise  indicible," 
he  would  not  alarm  his  mother  by  his  absence  on 
such  a  day;  but  dragged  himself  over  from  Cannes, 
and  gave  her  whom  he  loved  so  tenderly  the  illu- 
sion at  least  that  he  was  getting  better.  The  effort 
cost  him  more  than  life.  He  returned  to  Cannes 
by  train,  and  at  two  the  next  morning  Frangois  heard 
him  ringing  and  hurried  to  his  bedside,  only  to  find 
him  streaming  in  blood  and  out  of  his  mind,  crying — 
An  rancart!  an  rancart! 

Today  I  went  through  the  little,  low,  two-storied 
villa,  and  sat  where  he  had  sat,  and  walked  where 
he  had  walked.  Here,  on  this  raised,  half-moon 
terrace,  on  that  bright,  clear  day,  with  the  sunshine 
sparkling  over  there  on  the  red  roofs  and  the  blue 
sea  he  had  always  taken  such  pleasure  in;  here  he 


GUY  DE  MAUPASSANT  267 

stood,  another  Antony,  and  fought  a  more  terrible 
fight  than  the  Roman  ever  imagined.  I  had  seen 
him  a  month  before,  and  had  had  a  long,  intimate 
talk  with  him  which  cannot  be  set  down  in  these 
pages;  but  it  enables  me  to  picture  him  as  he  was 
on  that  fatal  morning.  He  had  taken  Francois  with 
him  to  cook  his  food;  he  meant  to  give  himself 
every  chance  of  winning  in  the  fight,  and  now,  the 
meal  over,  the  strain  of  talking  and  pretending  grew 
intolerable,  and  he  came  out  here  by  himself,  with 
only  the  blue,  unheeding  sky  above  and  the  purple, 
dancing  sea  in  front  to  mock  his  agony. 

How  desperately  he  struggled  for  control;  now 
answering  some  casual  remark  of  his  friends,  now 
breaking  out  into  cold  sweat  of  dread  as  he  felt  the 
rudder  slipping  from  his  hand;  called  back  to  sanity 
again  by  some  laughing  remark,  or  some  blessed 
sound  of  ordinary  life,  and  then,  again,  swept  off 
his  feet  by  the  icy  flood  of  sliding  memory  and 
dreadful  thronging  imaginings,  with  the  awful 
knowledge  behind  knocking  at  his  consciousness  that 
he  was  already  mad,  mad — never  to  be  sane  again, 
mad — that  the  awful  despairing  effort  to  hold  on  to 
the  slippery  rock  and  not  to  slide  down  Into  the 
depths  was  all  in  vain,  that  he  was  slipping,  slip- 
ping in  spite  of  himself,  in  spite  of  bleeding  fingers, 
falling — falling.   .  .   . 

Hell  has  no  such  horror!  There  in  that  torture 
chamber — did  his  agony  last  but  a  minute — he  paid 


268      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

all  debts,  poor,  hounded,  hunted  creature  with  wild 
beseeching  eyes,  choking  in  the  grip  of  the  foulest 
spectre  that  besets  humanity.  .  .  .  And  all  for 
what?  For  another  mad  hour  with  the  "bourgeoise 
de  plus  grand  chic  .  .  .  d'une  beaute  remarquable," 
all  for  another  kiss  from  the  stylish  lady  of  really 
remarkable  beauty,  "to  whom  he  was  always  glad 
to  say  'good-bye.'  " 

The  worship  of  the  great  goddess  Aselgeia  is 
sweet  indeed,  honey  to  the  lips;  but  the  price  she 
exacts  from  her  devotees  is  appalling.  How  many 
of  them  I  have  known,  and  how  brilliant  they  were: 
her  victims  are  taken  from  the  most  gifted  of  the 
sons  of  men.  Heine  fell  to  her  and  Maupassant 
and  scores  of  others  whom  for  pity's  sake  one  does 
not  name — young  and  gifted  and  lovable.  As  the 
clown  says  in  Twelfth  Night: 

Pleasure  will  be  paid  some  time  or  other. 


TALKS   WITH    PAUL   VERLAINE 

NOWHERE  is  the  growth  of  mankind  so 
clearly  to  be  seen  as  in  their  ideals.  Before 
beginning  one  of  his  famous  portraits,  Plutarch 
tells  his  readers  that  on  this  occasion  he  is  not  going 
to  talk  to  them  of  some  famous  general  or  states- 
man who  should  excite  emulation  in  well-born 
youths ;  but  of  a  painter  whose  example  no  gentleman 
would  think  of  following,  a  mere  artist.  Nearly 
twenty  centuries  later  Bacon  puts  forth  much  the 
same  view:  In  classifying  men  he  gives  the  first  five 
or  six  ranks  to  statesmen,  and  artists  are  not  even 
mentioned  as  among  the  great.  But  today  we 
should  put  saints  and  prophets  and  artists  high 
above  generals  and  statesmen;  indeed  we  esteem 
artistic  power  as  the  highest  and  rarest  of  human 
endowments  and  say  that  a  general  can  only  be  great 
in  so  far  as  he  wins  his  battles  like  an  artist,  that 
no  saint  can  hold  us,  no  prophet  inspire,  unless  he, 
too,  is  gifted  with  the  artist-faculty.  And  of  all 
artists  the  greatest  is  he  who  works  in  words. 

Goethe  says  somewhere  that  Tacitus  and  his 
history  are  as  valuable  as  Rome,  that  all  Eng- 
land   and     English    worth    found    expression    in 

269 


270      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

Shakespeare,  in  fact  that  the  dream  of  life  itself  is 
not  so  memorable  as  the  telling.  The  workman 
and  the  merchant,  the  lawyer  and  doctor,  the  man 
of  science,  the  soldier  and  the  priest  all  live  and 
labor  as  material  for  the  Singer.  Nothing  endures 
like  the  word:  "it  liveth  and  it  conquereth  for  ever- 
more." 

It  is  not  wonderful  then  that  men  should  be 
curious  about  the  poets  and  artists  of  their  own 
time.  They  will  take  more  and  more  interest  in 
them,  and  not  less,  as  they  advance  in  wisdom.  I 
need  no  excuse,  therefore,  for  talking  here  of  Ver- 
laine,  for  he,  too,  was  one  of  "the  Sacred  Band." 

Paul  Verlaine  did  not  look  like  one's  ideal  of  a 
poet:  he  is  best  to  be  seen  in  Rothenstein's  pencil 
sketch;  his  likeness  to  Socrates  was  extraordinary. 
One  could  have  sworn  that  the  old  Silenus-mask 
was  come  to  life  again  in  him.  But  Verlaine  had 
not  the  figure  of  the  great  fighter:  though  of  aver- 
age height  he  was  punily  made  and  inclined  to  be 
podgy.  With  his  careless,  slovenly  dress  he  would 
have  passed  unremarked  in  any  street  crowd,  French 
or  English.  He  seemed,  indeed,  to  wish  to  avoid 
notice :  there  was  something  timid  and  shy,  a  shrink- 
ing even,  in  his  manner,  due  to  constitutional  ner- 
vousness rather  than  to  reserve.  With  friends  Ver- 
laine gave  himself  as  freely  and  simply  In  talk  as 
he  did  in  his  writings.  I  have  never  known  any 
human  being  with  such  childlike,  perfect  frankness, 


TALKS  WITH  PAUL  VERLAINE     271 

such  transparent  sincerity  in  thought  and  being. 
After  a  couple  of  hours  spent  with  him  I  found  my- 
self wondering  whether  everyone  by  mere  frankness 
could  be  so  charming.  Of  course  it  was  the  absence 
of  malice  in  Verlaine,  the  absence  of  all  spite,  envy 
and  hatred,  the  lovingkindness  of  the  man  which 
was  so  engaging,  and  a  touch  of  gay  ironic  humor 
lent  an  ineffable  fascination  to  his  childlike  good 
nature. 

The  first  evening  he  dined  with  me  he  told  me  of 
an  adventure  which  seems  to  me  characteristic. 
After  he  came  out  of  prison  in  Belgium  he  made  his 
way  to  England.  In  London  poverty  forced  him  to 
offer  himself  as  a  teacher  of  French. 

"I  was  engaged,"  he  said,  "almost  immediately 
by  a  clergyman  at  Bournemouse  at  seventy  pounds 
a  year,  sans  blanchissage.  'No  washing'  was  won- 
derful to  me,"  he  added,  "because  I  use  so  little" 
— and  he  smiled. 

"Ze  train  was  arranged  for  me  and  everything, 
and  I  was  met  at  ze  station  by  a  big  man,  a  clergy- 


man. 


Are  you  Mr.  Verlaine?'  he  asked. 
"I  say  'Yes,'  and  he  shake  me  by  the  hand,  and 
talk  to  me  the  most  terrible  French  I  have  ever 
heard.  His  accent  was  more  than  an  accent;  it  was 
a  new  language.  One  had  to  guess  at  his  meaning. 
I  had  to  tell  him  I  could  understand  him  better  if 
he  would  talk  English,  though  I  only  knew  half  a 


272      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

dozen  words.  He  took  me  to  his  house,  which  was 
the  school,  and  treated  me  splendidly.  He  showed 
me  ze  room  that  was  to  be  mine,  and  asked  me  to 
dinner.  His  wife  was  charming  to  me,  and  they 
both  told  me  they  were  sure  I  should  succeed.  I 
could  only  say,  'I  will  do  my  best.' 

"After  dinner  ze  clergyman  told  me  he  thought 
it  better  I  should  rest  ze  next  day,  and  get  to  know 
ze  place  and  school  and  everything.  He  was  kind 
to  me  and  thoughtful.  There  were  colored  texts 
in  my  room,  very  beautiful  texts,  and  time-tables — 
the  time  to  post  letters,  time  to  get  up,  time  to  go 
to  bed — and  there  was  a  Bible  on  my  table  de  niiit; 
the  clergyman  was  very  English,  I  told  him  I  was 
willing  to  begin  work  at  once,  but  he  would  not  hear 
of  it,  so  I  rested  the  whole  day.  Next  morning  he 
came  into  my  room  to  introduce  me  to  the  boys. 

"  'Your  first  class  will  be  a  drawing  class,'  he 
said. 

"  'Drawing!'  I  cried.  *I  know  nozzing  of  draw- 
ing.' 

'Every  Frenchman,'  he  said,  'can  draw.' 
'But  I  cannot  draw,'  I  exclaimed  in  an  agony, 
'not  at  all;  I  have  never  held  a  pencil  in  my  life.     I 
came  to  teach  French;  I  really  know  French.' 

"  'Yes,'  he  say  to  me,  smiling  and  putting  his 
hand  on  my  shoulder,  'but  you  do  not  know  much 
English  yet,  and  until  you  do  know  a  little  more 
English  I  think  I  had  better  go  on  teaching  French!' 


"'] 


TALKS  WITH  PAUL  VERLAINE     273 

"  'Mon  Dleu,  mon  DIeu,'  I  said  to  myself,  but  I 
could  not  find  words  to  answer  him.  He  took  me 
into  the  class  and  put  a  wooden  cone  on  the  table 
and  told  the  boys  to  draw  It.  I  was  to  correct  zere 
drawings. 

"What  I  teach  the  boys  I  do  not  know.  I  taught 
myself  more  than  I  ever  taught  myself  In  my  life. 
In  a  fever  I  studied  light  and  shade  for  an  hour. 
Of  course  I  was  a  little  better  than  the  boys;  but  I 
was  no  more  master  of  drawing  than  he  was  master 
of  French.  Oh,  his  French,  it  was  horrible !  He 
talked  out  ze  verbs  In  a  loud  voice,  and  ze  class  had 
to  repeat  zem  after  him,  and  no  Frenchman  could 
have  understood  what  he  was  saying.  Such  a  lan- 
guage I  never  heard  In  my  life.  He  was  very  Eng- 
lish, but  he  was  kind  to  me  always.  I  had  to  go 
out  long  walks  with  the  boys.  Some  of  the  older 
boys  were  Interesting  and  ze  country  about  Bourne- 
mouse  was  beautiful.  That  English  life  was  new 
to  me.  It  was  strange  and  it  absorbed  me :  It  healed 
me.  It  was  like  an  oasis  In  the  burning  desert  of  my 
life.  I  got  quite  well  In  Bournemouse,  but  why  was 
it — seventy  pounds  a  year,  sans  hlanchissage?"  and 
he  murmured  to  himself,  shrugging  his  shoulders, 
"sans  hlanchissage,  et  je  m'en  sers  de  si  pen!" 
Again  and  again — "Seventy  pounds  a  year,  sans 
hlanchissage." 

"I  am  glad  you  liked  English  life,"  I  said  to  him, 
"and  Bournemouth." 


274      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

"It  was  healthy,"  he  replied,  "and  ze  clergyman 
he  meant  well  with  his  texts  and  time-tables;  and  I 
learned  a  good  deal  of  English,  and  read  some 
Shakespeare.  Quel  divine  poete!  I  could  never 
understand  how  that  clergyman  and  Shakespeare 
could  be  of  the  same  race." 

I  was  eager  to  find  out  how  much  Verlaine  knew 
of  Shakespeare;  whether  he  had  divined  him  at  all. 
But  when  I  pressed  him  he  took  refuge  in  generali- 
ties; and  when  I  tried  to  get  to  my  end  by  compari- 
sons he  would  not  be  netted.  He  likened  Shake- 
speare to  Racine  for  beauty  of  phrase;  and  when  I 
tried  to  say  that  there  was  no  magic  in  Racine,  no 
word  or  thought  comparable  to  Shakespeare's  best, 
he  accepted  what  I  said  with  smiling  good  humor. 
His  acquiescence  was  evidently  of  politeness  and  not 
agreement. 

It  was  difficult  to  get  at  the  soul  of  the  man,  dif- 
ficult to  reconcile  this  charming  faun-like  creature 
with  the  hero  of  a  strange  and  tragic  story.  Yet 
I  felt  that  the  two  were  identical ;  behind  Verlaine's 
openness  and  sincerity  were  deeps  on  deeps  of  feel- 
ing. Every  one  who  has  read  his  early  lyrics  must 
have  heard  of  the  tragedy,  of  his  passionate  ad- 
miration for  the  youth  Arthur  Rimbaud  and  the  ter- 
rible outcome  of  it.  It  may  all  be  told  here  very 
briefly.  Verlaine  left  his  wife  and  child  and  went 
to  Brussels  with  Rimbaud.  After  living  together 
some  time  they  quarrelled,  and  Verlaine  followed 


TALKS  WITH  PAUL  VERLAINE     275 

his  friend  one  night  to  a  brothel  and  in  a  fit  of  mad- 
jealousy  shot  him.  While  Rimbaud  lay  wounded 
in  hospital,  Verlaine  was  sentenced  to  a  year's  im- 
prisonment. It  was  in  prison  that  the  poet  first 
came  to  repentance  and  the  humility  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith,  and  thus  reached  the  apparent  dishar- 
mony of  his  dual  existence.  For  all  through  his 
life  afterwards  he  floated  from  passion  to  repent- 
ance, from  the  lust  of  the  flesh  to  sorrow  for  sin  in 
perpetual  alternation.  And  his  poetry  falls  natu- 
rally into  one  or  other  of  these  categories.  Never 
was  there  such  a  sinner  and  such  sincerity  of  sorrow. 

But  few  know  more  than  the  bare  outline  of  the 
tragic  story,  though  Madame  Verlaine  is  still  alive, 
and  her  account  of  what  happened  forty  years  ago 
is  easily  obtained.  She  is,  I  believe,  about  to  pub- 
lish her  "Memoirs"  and  to  relate  in  detail  her  rela- 
tions with  "Verlaine,"  as  she  always  calls  her  hus- 
band. Meanwhile  it  is  of  interest  to  psychologists 
just  to  consider  what  she  has  to  tell  of  that  almost 
accidental  meeting  with  Rimbaud  which  had  such  a 
profound  effect  on  Verlaine's  life.  Madame  Ver- 
laine is  now  a  comfortable-looking  old  lady,  who  has 
long  lost  the  "thin  arms"  the  poet  sung,  though  "the 
merry  eyes"  of  her  youth  are  still  to  be  divined.  She 
is  anything  but  diffident,  and  talks  of  her  past  life 
with  complete  frankness  and  a  curious  detachment. 

"We  had  just  returned  from  the  country,"  she 
began,  "we  had  been  staying  at  my  husband's  place 


276      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

at  Fampoux.  We  called  at  Lemerre's  (the  pub- 
lisher's). Verlaine  was  given  a  letter  with  some 
verses  signed  Rimbaud.  'They're  very  good!'  he 
said,  and  showed  them  to  my  mother,  to  Charles 
Cros,  and  to  Banville.  'Astoundingly  good,'  they 
all  agreed.  'You  must  ask  the  poet  to  come  to  see 
you.'  And  on  the  spot  they  subscribed  to  pay  the 
expense  of  the  journey.  At  that  time  we  were  liv- 
ing with  my  father  and  mother  in  a  little  hotel  in 
the  Rue  Nicolet.  In  the  linen-room  there  was  a 
little  iron  camp-bed,  which  my  brother  Charles  de 
Sivry  used  to  put  at  the  disposal  sometimes  of  any 
student  friend  who  might  be  hard  up.  We  decided 
to  let  Rimbaud  have  it.  .  .  .  Verlaine  went  to  meet 
him  at  the  station;  while  he  was  absent  Rimbaud 
arrived:  a  great  mane  of  untidy  hair,  fat  cheeks, 
skin  tanned  by  the  sun,  fine  eyes  though,  and  short 
trousers :  he  seemed  shy  and  sulky.  He  must  have 
been  about  my  own  age,"  Madame  Verlaine  went 
on  meditatively,  "about  seventeen.  Verlaine  re- 
turned: we  all  began  to  talk.  .  .  .  From  that  mo- 
ment Verlaine  altered  to  me.  He  went  back  to  the 
life  of  the  Cafe  and  the  morning  drink,  and  used 
often  to  come  home  in  a  bad  temper.  ...  I  was 
very  young  and  in  my  innocence  put  Verlaine's  liking 
for  Rimbaud  down  to  the  beautiful  things  Rimbaud 
wrote;  for  every  one  admired  him,  but  all  the  same 
I  said  to  myself  that  his  influence  on  Verlaine  was  a 
bad  one.  .  .  .  Then  my  son  Georges  was  born,,  and 


TALKS  WITH  PAUL  VERLAINE     277 

he  made  up  to  me  for  the  constant  scenes.  .  .  .  One 
morning  I  awoke  with  dreadful  neuralgia.  Verlaine 
went  out  as  he  said  to  fetch  Dr.  Cros.  At  noon  he 
had  not  come  back.  Night  came  and  no  Verlaine. 
For  four  whole  days  my  father  searched  Paris  for 
him :  he  had  gone  away  with  Rimbaud  and  had  taken 
all  his  money  with  him  (I  had  only  a  small  in- 
come). .  .   . 

"At  first  I  was  completely  overwhelmed.  Then 
my  courage  returned:  I  wouldn't  give  my  husband 
up  without  a  struggle.  I  managed  to  find  his  ad- 
dress. I  wrote  to  him  in  Brussels;  finally  he  con- 
sented to  see  me.  Off  I  went  with  my  mother,  leav- 
ing my  child  in  Paris.  I  met  Verlaine  in  the  morning 
in  a  little  hotel,  I  think  it  was  called  L'Hotel 
Liegois.  I  begged  him  to  return  with  me.  He  re- 
fused. I  proposed  that  we  should  travel:  he  re- 
fused. A  new  idea  came  to  me.  What  if  we  went 
to  New  Caledonia,  he  had  friends  there,  Louise 
Michel  and  others:  we  should  see  new  countries? 
The  idea  appealed  to  him.  He  said  he'd  meet  me 
that  afternoon  and  tell  me.  ...  At  five  o'clock  that 
evening  we  met  in  the  public  garden  near  the  sta- 
tion. He  seemed  sulky,  as  he  often  was  after  drink- 
ing coffee.     'Well?'  I  asked. 

"He  replied  casually  that  he'd  go  with  me. 

"All  trembling  with  joy  I  crossed  the  square  to 
my  mother :    *He  accepts.' 

"'What?'  she  cried. 


278      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

"  'Don't  let  us  waste  time  talking,'  I  said,  'let's 
start.' 

"We  all  went  to  the  station  and  got  into  the  train 
for  Paris.  After  It  started  we  ate  some  cold 
chicken.  Verlalne  didn't  speak  a  word:  he  pulled 
his  hat  down  over  his  eyes  and  went  to  sleep.  We 
reached  the  frontier,  and  had  to  get  down  for  the 
Customs.  Afterwards  we  went  to  the  train.  But 
Verlalne  wasn't  with  us.  We  hunted  everywhere 
for  him  high  and  low — In  vain.  The  train  was 
starting:  the  porters  pushed  us  In:  I  was  almost 
out  of  my  mind.  Suddenly,  there  before  me  on  the 
platform  was  Verlalne.  'Jump  in,  jump  In,'  cried 
my  mother  to  him.  'Come,'  I  cried,  'the  train's 
starting.'  'I'm  not  going,'  he  replied,  and  he  pulled 
his  soft  felt  hat  down  over  his  eyes  resolutely.  I 
never  saw  him  afterwards.  .  .  . 

"At  first  I  was  dreadfully  unhappy.  Verlalne 
talks  In  a  poem  of  my  voice  as  'weak,'  that  of  a  con- 
sumptive. It  was  true :  regret  made  me  ill.  For  five 
years  I  was  as  near  death  as  could  be.  It  was  only 
the  thought  of  my  son  that  gave  me  the  strength  to 
struggle.  Once  the  child  got  measles  and  was  very 
ill.     I'll  never  forget  my  anxiety:  I  was  desperate. 

"Well,  just  then  Verlalne  wanted  to  see  him.  My 
mother  consented,  hoping  to  bring  about  a  reconcilia- 
tion. I  had  no  hope,  hardly  the  wish.  Indeed;  Ver- 
lalne was  so  weak,  so  changeable.  I  stayed  in  the 
next  room  and  would  not  see  him.     I  did  right:  he 


TALKS  WITH  PAUL  VERLAINE     279 

never  came  back  again.  .  .  .  Oh,  he  wrote  me — in- 
terminable letters,  innumerable!  For  three  years  I 
kept  them  without  opening  one.  I  remember  getting 
one  letter  from  him  in  which  he  said: 

"  'If  you're  not  back  with  me  by  noon  I'll  kill 
myself.' 

"I  only  read  it  three  years  later.  ...  I  suppose 
he  loved  me  still,  or  thought  he  did.  He  was  kind; 
but  so  weak,  so  unstable,  untrustworthy — like  water, 
terrible !  I  wanted  to  forget  him,  I  succeeded  at 
length,  I  had  to." 

How  natural  the  scenes,  how  lifelike  the  actors ! 
Can  one  ever  forget  Verlaine  on  the  platform, 
moody,  pulling  his  hat  down  over  his  eyes,  "I'm 
not  going." 

And  then  the  child-wife  frantic  with  anxiety  about 
her  boy;  but  resolved  not  to  see  the  father,  and  wait- 
ing in  the  next  room  till  he  should  go :  he  had  hurt 
her  too  deeply:  "I  wanted  to  forget  him,  I  had 
to  .  .  ."  What  a  picture  of  life  etched  in  by  suf- 
fering ! 

I  was  in  constant  relations  with  Verlaine,  both  as 
editor  and  friend,  for  the  last  few  years  of  his  life. 
I  published  some  poems  of  his  in  The  Fortnightly 
Review,  though  I  had  a  good  deal  of  difficulty  with 
my  directors  in  getting  adequate  payment  for  poetry, 
and  French  poetry  was  anathema  to  them.  When  I 
sent  Verlaine  his  cheque  he  used  to  reply  in  a  letter 


28o      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

thanking  me,  and  at  the  end  of  a  month  or  so  he 
would  write  me  another  letter  saying  he  hoped  I 
liked  his  poem,  and  would  I  send  the  money  for  it 
to  the  above  address.  Of  course  I  wrote  to  him  say- 
ing I  had  already  sent  the  money  and  held  his  re- 
ceipt for  it.  He  wrote  back  admitting  the  fact  and 
excusing  himself,  saying  he  was  so  hard  up  that  he 
liked  to  think  he  had  not  been  paid.  Of  course  I 
did  what  others  would  have  done,  and  sent  him  more 
than  I  owed.  There  was  something  of  the  wisdom 
of  the  serpent  mingled  with  his  childlike  frankness. 

In  those  latter  days  Verlaine  was  to  be  seen  at  his 
best  in  a  restaurant  on  the  Boul'  Mich',  where  he 
often  spent  his  evenings.  He  used  to  sit  in  a  corner 
drinking  and  talking  of  poetry  and  literature  with  a 
little  crowd  of  fervent  admirers  about  him.  Every 
student  who  came  in  made  a  point  of  passing  his 
corner  and  of  bowing  to  him  in  greeting  with  a 
^'cher  maitre." 

Verlaine  accepted  the  homage  with  a  child's  un- 
feigned delight.  It  was  to  him  a  sort  of  apotheosis, 
the  reward  of  much  suffering.  One  night  some  one 
begged  him  to  recite  "Le  pauvre  Gaspard,"  a  most 
characteristic  poem,  as  characteristic  perhaps  of  Ver- 
laine as  "The  Last  Word"  is  of  Matthew  Arnold. 
The  poem  was  suggested,  I  imagine,  by  a  word  of 
Alfred  de  Musset — "Je  suls  venu  trop  tard  dans  un 
monde  trop  vieux?"     But  the  question  Is  brought 


TALKS  WITH  PAUL  VERLAINE     281 

to  Intenser  significance  by  Verlaine.    The  last  verse 
runs: 

Suis-je  ne  trop  tot  ou  trop  tard? 
Qu'est-ce  que  j  e  f ais  en  ce  monde ! 
Ohj  vous  tous,  ma  peine  est  profonde: 
Priez  pour  le  pauvre  Gaspard. 

He  recited  the  verses  perfectly,  bringing  out  all 
the  pathos  of  them,  while  marking  the  rhythm  with 
a  slight  beat  of  his  left  hand.  A  silence  as  of  un- 
shed tears  followed,  and  in  the  silence  he  repeated 
the  last  verse  again,  as  if  to  himself,  slowly,  sadly, 
and  then  suddenly  his  mood  changed  and  in  the  last 
line  he  substituted  "payez"  for  "priez,"  smiling  at 
us  the  while  mischievously.  Of  course  we  were  all 
too  eager  to  pay  for  this  poor  Gaspard. 

I  have  left  myself  practically  no  space  to  speak 
of  Verlaine's  achievement  as  a  poet,  but  there  is 
less  need  for  that,  as  his  work  is  known  and-  loved 
wherever  French  is  read.  There  is  no  more  beau- 
tiful poetry  in  the  language.  Verlaine's  name  will 
be  coupled  with  Villon's  in  the  future  as  a  writer  of 
the  best  French  lyrics.  His  religious  poems  de- 
serve perhaps  a  higher  place.  He  is  the  greatest 
Christian  singer  since  Dante  and  his  passionate  sin- 
cerity of  feeling  brought  new  effects  into  French 
poetry.  There  is  a  singular  directness  and  sim- 
plicity in  his  best  verse  :vhich  is  very  rare,  and  he 
uses  a  childlike  repetition,  common  enough  in  Eng- 


282      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

lish  and  German  poetry,  but  almost  unknown  till 
his  time  In  French  poetry,  with  extraordinary  im- 
presslveness: 

Vous  connaissez  tout  cela,  tout  cela, 

Et  que  je  suis  plus  pauvre  que  personne, 

Vous  connaissez  tout  cela,  tout  cela, 

Mais  ce  que  j'ai,  mon  Dieu,  je  vous  le  donne. 


FABRE 

IS  there  any  pleasure  after  forty  like  finding  a 
new  book,  meeting  a  new  man!  The  gasp  of 
excitement,  the  hope,  the  flutterings  of  delight,  the 
growing  conviction  that  the  book  has  widened  the 
mental  horizon,  is  a  classic  therefore,  a  possession 
of  the  spirit  for  ever — all  the  joys  soon  merged  in 
curiosity  as  to  the  writer:  who  is  he?  How  did 
life  treat  him?  To  what  qualities  in  him  do  we  owe 
this  deathless  work? 

There  before  me  is  the  book  Insect  Life,  the 
author's  name,  before  unknown,  now  radiant — J. 
H.  Fabre.  Where  does  Browning  talk  of  the  de- 
light of  seeing  and  naming  a  star?  No  shadow 
of  doubt  in  the  recognition,  no  hesitation  possible. 
Fabre  has  revealed  a  new  world  to  us;  beneath 
our  very  feet  indeed — the  world  of  the  infinitely 
littl-e,  with  its  innumerable  tiny  Inhabitants,  each 
living  his  own  life  and  dying  his  own  death.  The 
comedies  and  tragedies  of  their  existence  are  shown 
us  with  simple,  scrupulous  care,  and  we  realize  at 
once  that  this  world,  too,  is  all  fashioned  like  our 
own  with  purposes  we  cannot  fathom,  to  ends  in- 
conceivable— all  mysterious,  indeed,  and  wonderful 

283 


284      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

to  us;  now  Innocently  beautiful  as  a  June  morning, 
now  grotesque  and  petty,  now  sublime,  now  hor- 
rible: self-abnegation  and  love  working  through 
blood  and  lust  to  some  unknown  goal  or — to  no 
goal  at  all;  for  the  darkness  is  impenetrable:  the 
doubt  will  not  be  laid. 

The  shallow,  modern  optimist  is  brought  to 
shame  at  once.  Fabre,  it  appears,  is  already  a  very 
old  man — eighty-seven  indeed;  has  worked  as  a 
naturalist  in  a  village  in  Languedoc  for  three-quar- 
ters of  a  century;  has  written  and  published  thirty 
volumes,  and  was  only  discovered  by  the  wise  men 
in  Paris  the  other  day,  when,  as  he  says  himself  a 
little  sadly,  "I'm  past  work." 

Yet  there  can  be  no  question  about  his  value. 
Maeterlinck  calls  Fabre  "one  of  the  glories  of  the 
civilized  world  .  .  .  one  of  the  most  profound  ad- 
mirations of  my  life."  Rostand  talks  of  him  as 
a  savant  who  "thinks  like  a  philosopher  and  writes 
like  a  poet,"  and  RIchepIn  joins  In  the  chorus.  For 
the  first  time  In  my  memory  Frenchmen  of  all 
schools  are  agreed  that  Fabre  is  one  of  the  great 
naturalists  of  the  world,  and  yet  if  he  had  died  at 
eighty-five  hardly  one  man  in  ten  thousand  of  his 
own  countrymen  would  have  known  his  name.  So 
much  for  popular  appreciation  of  genius  in  a  de- 
mocracy. 

Yet  his  life  has  been  as  noble  as  his  work.  The 
son  of  a  poor  peasant,  he  taught  himself  to  read 


FABRE  285 

by  the  light  of  a  pine-cone — a  tallow  candle  being 
too  dear.  After  hours  of  study  on  winter  nights 
he  used  to  He  with  the  sheep  in  order  to  get  warm, 
and  was  often  awakened  by  the  howhng  around  the 
fold  of  the  savage  wolves  of  the  Rouergue.  He 
paid  his  way  through  the  College  at  Rodez  by  his 
services  as  a  choir-boy,  and  then  set  himself  to  study 
Nature  on  an  empty  stomach,  but  with  a  new  book, 
of  poetry  in  his  pocket.  Poverty  has  been  his  com- 
panion throughout  his  life:  even  now  the  house  he 
lives  in  with  his  wife  and  children  Is  a  peasant's 
cottage  distempered  rose-red  with  jalousies  painted 
pea-green,  and  his  food  and  clothing  are  simple 
in  the  extreme.  Yet  he  looks  on  life  bravely,  fairly, 
without  affectation  of  triumph,  or  trace  of  bitter- 
ness: "It's  wretched  luck,"  he  says,  "that  now  I've 
got  some  good  ideas  I'm  unable  to  carry  them  out. 
...  I  can  only  think  when  I'm  walking  about, 
and,"  he  adds  with  regret,  "my  legs  have  given  out." 
I  don't  know  how  to  begin  telling  all  that  Fabre 
has  done  in  his  seventy-five  years  of  labor;  the 
result  is  colossal.  Ten  volumes  on  insects  and 
their  lives  and  instincts,  and  ten  or  twelve  other 
volumes  with  a  practical  lesson  In  each  of  them. 
One  on  the  domestic  animals,  one  on  the  animals 
useful  to  agriculture,  another  on  Insects  hurtful  to 
agriculture,  another  on  botany,  yet  another  on 
"The  Earth"  and  a  companion  volume  on  "The 
Heavens."     There  are  besides  lectures  on  zoology, 


286      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

lectures  on  history  and  agricultural  chemistry, 
chapters  on  coins  and  poetry — five  thousand  pages, 
in  which  one  finds  everywhere  the  patient,  loving 
observations  of  the  naturalist  arranged  by  a  most 
sincere  artist  and  set  to  words  by  a  poet.  Fabre, 
it  seems  to  me,  has  written  the  first  book  of  the 
new  Bible,  the  Bible  of  Nature. 

Let  us  take  him  as  our  guide  in  this  new  world 
for  a  little  while.  He  begins  by  talking  about  the 
sacred  beetle  of  the  Egyptians,  the  common  beetle 
of  the  South  of  France,  which  every  one  has  seen 
on  the  road  pushing  an  enormous  ball  ten  times  as 
big  as  himself  up  hill  and  down  dale  with  feverish 
energy  and  indefatigable  perseverance.  Scarcely 
one  observer  in  a  hundred  cares  to  notice  that  the 
booty  is  made  up  of  cowdung  or  other  excrement, 
that  the  beetle  is  one  of  the  most  assiduous  of  Na- 
ture's scavengers.  Again  and  again  the  sturdy  lit- 
tle creature  in  its  gleaming  black  armor  pushes 
the  ball  up  some  steep  hill;  half-way  up  a  blade  of 
grass  tree-like  bars  the  way  and  suddenly  ball  and 
Sisyphus-workman  roll  to  the  bottom  over  and  over 
again  in  hideous  defeat.  The  beetle  returns  to  his 
task  undismayed,  and  after  inconceivable  efforts 
gets  the  ball  where  he  wants  it. 

Often  he  has  to  fight  as  well  as  labor.  Another 
beetle  will  come  down  and  perch  on  top  of  the  ball 
and  annex  it,  and  strike  down  the  true  proprietor  as 
soon  as  he  advances  to  the  attack.     The  beetle's 


FABRE  287 

courage  is  beyond  question;  he  attacks  again  and 
again  until  he  drives  away  the  robber  or  until  he  is 
convinced  that  the  robber  is  the  stronger,  in  which 
case  he  hurries  back  to  the  dung-heap  and  begins  to 
form  another  ball,  which  he  will  again  push  to  its 
destination. 

Worse  even  than  the  robber  is  to  be  met  with  in 
the  beetle's  struggle  for  life.  Sometimes  another 
beetle  quietly  joins  the  proprietor  and  at  first  makes 
some  show  of  aiding  him  by  pulling  the  ball  while 
the  proprietor  pushes  it.  After  a  little  while,  how- 
ever, the  parasite  usually  tires  of  the  work  and 
calmly  climbs  on  top  of  the  ball,  and  allows  the  in- 
defatigable proprietor  to  push  him  as  well  as  his 
dinner  to  the  common  refectory. 

When  the  beetle  has  got  the  ball  where  he  wants 
it,  in  some  sunny,  quiet  corner,  he  immediately  be- 
gins to  dig  out  a  cave  twenty  times  as  large  as  him- 
self, and  ten  times  as  deep.  As  soon  as  he  is  lost 
to  view  the  parasite  seizes  the  opportunity  and  be- 
gins pushing  the  ball  away  for  himself.  But  the 
proprietor,  down  in  his  cave,  returns  every  now  and 
then  to  the  surface,  and  as  soon  as  he  misses  the 
ball  hurries  after  it  and  the  parasite.  Sometimes 
the  parasite  will  coolly  pretend  the  ball  is  his,  but, 
as  a  rule,  he  does  not  want  to  fight,  and  therefore 
becomes  very  officious  indeed  in  pushing  the  ball 
back  to  the  refectory.  When  the  proprietor  has 
carefully  lowered  the  ball  into  the  cave  the  two  con- 


288      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

struct  a  roof,  and  thus  shut  themselves  out  from 
the  world  in  a  warm,  half-dark  cave.  In  solemn  si- 
lence and  shade  they  begin  the  most  extraordinary 
banquet  that  has  yet  been  recorded  in  the  world. 
For  twenty  or  thirty  days  they  will  sit  opposite  each 
other  eating  without  intermission  or  pause  day  and 
night  till  the  last  atom  has  been  consumed,  leaving 
as  proof  of  their  powers  a  long  thread  of  excre- 
ment which  runs  into  yards  each  day,  and  each  day 
weighs  as  much  as  the  feasters.  And  this  Gargan- 
tuan banquet  for  private  pleasure,  subserves  the 
public  health,  for  the  excrement  of  the  sheep  and 
cow  is  thus  cleared  away  and  prevented  from  In- 
fecting the  upper  air. 

But  feeding  is  only  one  small  part  of  the  activity 
of  the  beetle,  Fabre  looks  not  upon  hunger,  nor 
upon  love,  but  on  maternity  as  the  sovereign  In- 
splrer  of  Instinct.  A  male  beetle  will  make  a  great 
booty  and  eat  It,  but  when  the  female  wishes  to 
lay  her  eggs  the  two  make  a  ball  many  times  larger 
composed  of  finest  nutriment  for  the  benefit  of  the 
larva.  They  pick  out  a  sunny  bank  and  dig  a  large 
subterranean  chamber  In  which  the  immense  ball 
of  food  Is  gradually  formed  Into  the  shape  of  a 
pear,  and  pressed  and  patted  and  beaten  till  the 
outside  of  It  Is  as  smooth  as  silk.  This  outside  plays 
the  part  of  a  shell,  and  is  soon  hardened  by  the 
heat  of  the  summer  sun  to  the  firmness  of  terra- 
cotta.    This  shell,  so  to  speak,  Is  Intended  to  keep 


FABRE  289 

the  Inside  soft  and  eatable  for  several  weeks  in 
spite  of  the  heat. 

The  female  lays  her  eggs  in  the  small  end  of  the 
pear,  and  round  it  she  puts  the  finer  milky  nourish- 
ment of  her  own  body  for  the  little  worm  to  eat  as 
soon  as  it  is  born.  With  infinite  care  she  closes 
the  aperture  over  the  egg  so  that  a  certain  amount 
of  air  can  penetrate  to  the  larva,  and  then  she  and 
her  mate  leave  their  work  and  go  in  search  of  food. 
If  the  beetle  is  a  glutton  when  it  eats,  it  labors 
magnificently,  and  when  constructing  the  nest  for  its 
young  often  goes  without  food  for  weeks  at  a  time; 
in  fact  it  is  an  ebony  jar  of  energy  which  it  dispenses 
for  its  offspring. 

And  the  little  worm  when  it  wakes  to  life  and 
looks  about  it  for  nourishment  shows  just  as  won- 
derful instinct.  If  you  pierce  his  birthchamber  with 
a  needle  and  let  the  air  in  while  trying  to  study  him, 
he  will  at  once  close  it  up  with  excrement,  and  re- 
peat the  experiment  as  often  as  you  please. 

But  how,  it  may  be  asked,  does  the  little  larva 
manage  to  get  out  of  his  terra-cotta  prison?  He 
has  to  reckon,  it  appears,  on  chance  for  salvation. 
The  first  rainy  day  will  make  his  prison  soft  and 
spongy,  and  he  can  cut  his  way  out  into  the  light. 
If  no  rain  falls  he  dies.  The  first  day  of  his  de- 
liverance he  takes  a  sun  bath.  He  will  crawl  up 
a  blade  of  grass  and  sit  sunning  himself  all  day 


290      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

long  without  an  attempt  to  find  food,  the  next  day 
his  appetite  awakens,  and  his  normal  life  begins. 

Fabre  describes  other  nests  as  complicated  as  the 
nest  of  this  beetle  Is  simple;  nests  that  are  found 
five  feet  and  six  feet  under  ground;  nests  with  long 
corridors  and  galleries  where  not  one  pear  Is  pre- 
pared for  the  offspring,  but  half  a  dozen;  and  where 
the  heat  of  the  sun  Is  tempered  for  the  little  naked 
worm. 

The  maternal  Instinct,  with  Its  self-sacrifice  and 
foresight  and  care.  Is  often  wise  with  the  wisdom 
of  a  fiend,  and  cruel  to  a  degree  almost  unknown 
among  beings  of  a  larger  growth.  The  hardest 
problem  for  the  mother  Is  to  ensure  good  food  for 
her  offspring — food  that  will  remain  soft  and  eata- 
ble and,  If  possible,  fresh  for  weeks.  Certain 
species  have  hit  upon  a  remarkable  way  of  solving 
the  difficulty.  Fabre  found  in  their  nests  what  at 
first  seemed  to  him  the  carcasses  of  other  beetles. 
Then  he  was  struck  by  the  fact  that  these  carcasses 
had  not  gone  bad.  Studying  the  bodies,  he  dis- 
covered that  the  beetles  were  still  alive,  and  they 
lived  on  under  glass  In  his  room  for  as  much  as  a 
month  or  five  weeks.  Yet  they  could  not  move, 
and  could  do  nothing  to  defend  themselves — could 
indeed  be  eaten  while  alive  by  the  tiny,  soft  larva. 
They  had  been  paralysed.  In  fact — but  how? 

First  of  all  he  noticed  that  nearly  all  of  them 
belonged  to   one  species,   and  then  he  discovered 


FAB  RE  291 

that  this  species  had  the  ganglia  of  motor-nerves 
concentrated  just  between  the  corselet  over  the 
chest  and  the  corselet  over  the  stomach.  Here, 
then,  was  the  vulnerable  point.  An  experiment  or 
two  showed  him  that  if  he  pricked  them  in  this 
spot  with  a  needle  having  a  drop  of  ammonia  on 
it  he  could  paralyse  the  motor  centres — in  fact  he 
could  make  the  beetle  as  helpless  as  he  had  found 
it  in  the  nest.  The  next  thing  was  to  find  out  whether 
this  was  the  way  their  enemies  proceeded. 

In  a  chapter  called  "A  Clever  Butcher"  he  tells 
us  the  story:  he  watched  the  insects  at  work.  The 
insect  he  calls  the  Cerceris  is  the  butcher.  The 
Cerceris  seizes  the  larger  beetle  by  the  head  and 
pushes  him  backwards  till  the  corselet  protecting 
the  chest  and  the  corselet  protecting  the  stomach  are 
separated;  he  then  darts  his  sting  into  the  ganglia 
between  the  two  armors.  Immediately  the  beetle 
falls  as  if  struck  by  lightning.  Its  legs  may  move 
spasmodically  for  a  second  or  two,  but  that's  all. 
Its  assailant  stands  watching  its  victim  in  its  agony. 
When  the  Cerceris  sees  that  the  beetle  is  quiet  he 
drags  it  off  by  the  leg  to  lay  up  in  warm  storage 
for  weeks  and  weeks,  to  be  eaten  bit  by  bit,  while 
still  alive  by  the  little  larva.  No  more  horrible 
cruelty  can  be  imagined.  Tennyson  was  right  when 
he  talked  of  Nature  lending  evil  dreams.  But  what 
cleverness  in  the  Cerceris  1  Who  taught  the  little 
beast  the  vulnerable  point?     If  chance  discovered 


292      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

the  weak  spot  it  needed  reasoning  power  to  act  on 
the  discovery  and  turn  hazard  into  instinct.  But 
Fabre  will  provide  us  with  instances  of  still  more 
intelligent  cleverness  and  still  more  fiendish  cruelty. 

I  have  never  heard  or  read  of  any  fights  so  des- 
perate, so  diabohcally  clever  and  cruel,  as  those 
Fabre  describes  between  insects.  Dozens  of  dif- 
ferent species  paralyse  their  victims  by  stinging 
them  in  the  nerve-centres.  Not  one  bungles  the  op- 
eration or  stings  at  random;  knowledge  directs  the 
weapon — one  might  almost  say  scientific  knowledge. 
As  Fabre  says,  chance  knows  no  rule. 

Many  of  these  combats  rather  resemble  a  fight 
between  a  pirate  and  a  merchant-ship — the  differ- 
ence in  size  is  more  than  made  up  by  the  difference 
in  armament.  The  pirate  is  sure  to  win.  But 
Fabre  tells  also  of  death-struggles  where  every  con- 
ceivable advantage  is  with  the  big  fellow,  and  yet 
the  daring  little  assailant  brings  off  the  victory. 
For  example,  every  one  knows  the  terrible  spider 
of  the  South — the  spider  with  the  black  belly,  the 
Tarantula — whose  poisonous  bite  kills  a  mole  or 
a  small  bird,  and  often  makes  even  a  man  seriously 
ill.  Well,  there  is  a  waspish  creature  called  the 
Calicurgue  Annele,  or  Pompile,  not  half  the  size 
of  the  Tarantula,  and  with  a  sting  not  a  tithe  as 
venomous,  who  does  not  hesitate  to  attack  the  great 
spider.  On  dissecting  the  Tarantula,  Fabre  found 
that  the  thorax  was  the  place  in  which  a  sting  would 


FABRE  193 

paralyse  its  motor-nerves.  He  then  brought  the 
two  enemies  face  to  face.  The  disproportion  in 
size,  strength,  and  armor  seemed  enormous;  yet 
the  Pompile  was  not  frightened.  He  walked  round 
the  spider  and  halted,  as  if  to  seize  it  by  a  limb.  At 
once  the  great  Tarantula  rose  on  its  hind  legs  and 
opened  its  mouth :  Fabre  saw  the  poison  glistening 
on  its  dagger  fangs.  The  Pompile  walked  away, 
but  was  not  frightened.  It  was  the  Tarantula  that 
showed  fear  and  hate;  he  hurried  after  the  Pom- 
pile and  seized  him;  put  his  poison-fangs  on  him, 
but  did  not  bite;  why  not?  Fabre  could  not  im- 
agine. But  the  fact  remains.  One  day,  however, 
the  Pompile  assaulted  the  Tarantula  face  to  face 
and  stung  him — in  the  thorax?  No,  he  knew  a 
trick  worth  two  of  that,  a  trick  which  the  human 
anatomist  had  overlooked. 

If  he  paralysed  the  motor-nerves  the  Tarantula 
might  still  bite  him.  With  the  utmost  precision  and 
care  the  Pompile  stabbed  the  great  spider  in  the 
mouth,  thus  rendering  him  incapable  of  using  his 
fangs,  and  then,  after  examining  his  head  to  make 
sure  it  was  powerless,  he  darted  his  sting  into  the 
thorax  again  and  again,  so  that  his  young  might 
not  be  incommoded  by  the  spider's  movements. 
The  little  insect  is  as  clever  as  a  surgeon  practised 
in  dissection. 

There  is  still  another  insect  that  attacks  and 
conquers  in  the  same  way;  but  as  soon  as  it  has 


294      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

brought  off  the  stab  in  the  mouth  it  executes  a  tri- 
umphal, ferocious  war  dance  round  its  victim. 
"Look  at  the  great  brute,"  It  seems  to  say.  "I've 
pricked  him  and  made  him  harmless;  I  am  a  cham- 
pion at  the  game."  Then  having  made  sure  that 
its  victim  is  Indeed  powerless  to  strike,  It  proceeds 
scientifically  to  paralyse  one  motor-centre  after  the 
other,  and  sometimes  there  are  a  dozen  that  must 
be  operated  upon  before  the  victim  is  entirely 
helpless. 

The  love-making  of  many  insects  is  just  as  inter- 
esting as  their  mortal  combats.  Fabre  has  a  chap- 
ter on  the  pairing  of  the  Scorpions  of  Languedoc, 
which  is  more  fascinating  than  most  of  our  novels. 

He  begins  by  describing  the  creature.  It  is  some 
three  inches  long,  and  straw-colored.  Its  tail, 
which  it  generally  carries  arched  over  its  back,  is 
in  reality  the  stomach,  and  the  last  joint  of  it  con- 
tains the  poisonous  sting.  The  poison  itself  looks 
like  a  drop  of  water,  and  no  chemical  analysis  of 
it  has  yet  been  successful,  for  when  the  ingredients 
revealed  by  the  analysis  are  again  combined,  the 
poison  has  lost  its  power.  The  sting  itself  is  very 
strong  and  sharp,  curved  like  the  striking  tooth  of  a 
snake,  and,  like  the  snake's  poison-fang,  the  hole 
from  which  the  poison  issues  Is  a  little  away  from 
the  end.  The  animal  uses  Its  front  claws  or  pincers 
as  a  weapon  or  as  a  means  of  getting  information. 

Fabre  keeps  his  scorpions  in  a  glass  cage,  and 


FABRE  295 

studies  them  at  leisure.  For  the  most  part  of  the 
year  they  are  quiet  and  solitary;  two  are  never  seen 
together.  But  In  April  they  begin  to  move  about 
and  get  lively.  He  suddenly  becomes  aware  that 
they  are  eating  one  another;  here  is  a  pair,  and  half 
of  one  is  already  consumed.  Is  it  the  result  of  a 
combat?  A  little  later  he  finds  another,  and  yet 
another  instance  of  cannibalism.  As  the  summer 
advances  the  fact  becomes  common.  He  begins  to 
study  It.  He  notices  at  once  that  the  one  eaten  Is 
always  middle-sized  and  a  little  paler  In  color  than 
the  cannibal.  In  other  words,  it  Is  the  large  brown 
female  which  eats  the  male.  It  Is  always  the  male 
which  is  eaten.  Fabre  pursues  his  investigation  by 
night  with  a  lantern.  To  his  astonishment  he  finds 
a  sort  of  ball  going  on.  These  creatures,  which  used 
to  be  so  solitary  and  so  shy  now  come  out  of  the 
shade  and  hurry  together  in  crowds  under  the  light 
as  to  a  dance.  Their  agility  makes  the  onlooker 
smile.  Clearly  they  are  sorting  themselves  out  In 
pairs.  Here  the  male  touches  a  female  with  the 
end  of  his  claw,  but  immediately  springs  back  again 
as  if  he  had  been  burnt.  Another  pair  join  hands, 
but  as  soon  as  their  tails  meet  and  touch  they  move 
away  from  each  other  as  if  in  disgust.  At  times 
there  is  a  regular  tumult;  a  whole  crowd  of  claws 
and  pincers  and  tails  rubbing  and  touching  and 
pinching,  one  scarcely  knows  whether  In  anger  or 
in  love.     The  play  is  madder  than  a  romp  of  kit- 


296      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

tens.  They  all  fly  apart;  then  they  begin  to  come 
together  again.  Suddenly  Fabre  notices  a  pair 
which  take  hands  in  a  friendly  way,  and  rub  tails 
with  manifest  content.  Side  by  side,  claw  in  claw, 
they  walk  away  together.  They  are  evidently 
courting  like  a  village  boy  and  girl.  Every  now  and 
then  the  male  caresses  the  back  of  his  companion 
with  his  tail.    The  female  accepts  his  caress. 

To  his  amazement,  they  stop  and  kiss.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  about  it.  Fabre  has  watched  it 
again  and  again.  The  two  faces — or  what  should 
be  faces — come  together  and  the  two  mouths  meet. 
The  two  hands  are  clasped,  too,  the  male  sometimes 
lets  loose  one  pair  of  pincers  in  order  to  pass  his 
claw  tenderly  over  the  horny  head  of  his  com- 
panion. Clearly  the  pair  are  kissing;  yet  there  is 
no  face  there,  nothing  but  two  eyes  and  a  great 
cavity  and  a  jaw,  and  still  the  two  horrible  masks 
evidently  enjoy  the  embrace.  Now  and  then  the 
male  pretends  to  bite  her,  and  his  mouth  mumbles 
her  mouth,  while  his  front  claws  are  caressing  the 
horrible  mask  that  is  no  doubt  lovely  in  his  sight. 
There  is  a  French  proverb  which  says  the  dove  ia- 
vented  the  kiss,  but  the  scorpion,  Fabre  says,  was 
before  the  dove. 

There  is  every  trick  of  coquetry  In  this  female. 
Suddenly  she  has  had  enough,  and  strikes  the  male's 
wrists  away,  and  pretends  to  go  off  by  herself. 
The  male  follows  her,  takes  her  claws  in  one  of  his, 


FABRE  297 

and  caresses  her  back  with  his  tail.  Again  they  re- 
sume their  walk  together.  A  piece  of  tile  is  in  their 
way.  At  once  the  male  works  with  his  tail  and 
one  daw  in  order  to  make  a  cave  underneath  the 
tile.  He  tries  to  draw  the  female  in ;  but  she  re- 
sists; she  will  not  enter  the  newly  made  bridal- 
chamber.  With  sulky  determination  she  draws  the 
male  from  underneath  the  tile,  and  they  continue 
their  walk.  For  hours  the  courtship  goes  on. 
Again  the  male  finds  a  sheltered  nook;  this  time 
under  a  slate.  Again  the  female  resists;  but  this 
time  the  male  is  more  determined,  and  draws  her 
resolutely  toward  the  cave  in  spite  of  her  resistance. 
But  when  she  comes  to  the  edge  of  the  slate  she 
finds  support.  Not  only  does  she  root  her  claws 
in  the  ground,  but  curls  her  tail  over  so  that  it 
stems  itself  against  the  slate;  she  then  stiffens  into 
rigidity.  The  struggle  continues  minute  after  min- 
ute, but  at  length  the  male  has  to  give  in;  the  pres- 
sure is  relaxed  and  the  walk  resumed,  with  its 
caressings  and  hideous  kissings. 

This  courtship  has  all  sorts  of  incidents.  Every 
now  and  then  the  pair  meet  some  other  females, 
who  always  stop  and  watch  the  couple,  perhaps  out 
of  jealousy,  for  now  and  then  one  throws  herself 
on  the  female  and  holds  her  claws  and  does  her 
best  to  stop  the  walk.  The  male  protests  against 
the  interference.  He  pulls  and  drags  at  his  com- 
panion in  vain;  he  cannot  budge  the  two  females; 


298      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

again  and  again  he  strains  to  the  task,  but  withoui 
success.  Suddenly  he  gives  up  the  courtship  and 
turns  away.  Another  female  is  close  by;  he  seizes 
her  by  the  claws  and  invites  her  to  continue  the 
promenade,  but  she  will  not;  she  resists,  struggles 
with  him,  and  then  scuttles  away.  Nothing  daunt- 
ed, he  goes  to  a  third  in  the  crowd  of  female  on- 
lookers, and  this  time  is  more  fortunate,  the  female 
accepts  his  claw  and  they  go  off  together.  With 
this  lady  the  courtship  is  not  so  long.  At  the  first 
piece  of  tile  the  male  drops  one  claw  of  his  com- 
panion and  uses  his  free  claw  and  his  tail  to  hol- 
low out  a  cave.  Little  by  little  he  enters,  drawing 
the  complacent  female  with  him.  Soon  they  have 
both  disappeared.  A  movement  or  two  of  the  tail 
on  the  inside  and  a  little  mound  of  sand  is  pushed 
up  behind  them;  the  door  is  shut,  the  couple  are 
at  home. 

Again  and  again  Fabre  lifts  the  tile,  but  discovers 
nothing:  the  claws  are  intertwined,  the  mouths 
touching,  but  as  soon  as  the  light  falls  on  them 
the  lovers  separate;  yet  in  the  morning,  if  he  leaves 
them  undisturbed,  he  always  finds  the  tragedy  com- 
pleted, the  male  has  fulfilled  the  purpose  of  his 
brief  life  and  is  already  partially  devoured  by  the 
female.  She  goes  to  work  quite  calmly  to  eat  him, 
and  returns  again  and  again  to  the  loathsome  feast 
until  her  lover  is  all  consumed  except  the  hardest 
parts  of  his  claws  and  tail.     All  the  coquetry,  all 


FABRE  299 

the  love-making,  all  the  caressing  and  kissing  ends 
in  the  murder  of  the  lover  and  the  disgusting  feast 
on  his  remains. 

As  if  to  complete  the  horrible  parody  of  human 
life,  these  cannibal  scorpions  make  noble,  self-sac- 
rificing mothers.  They  take  infinite  care  of  their 
little  ones,  spending  weeks  on  their  nurture  and 
training,  weeks  in  which  the  mother  does  not  even 
eat,  so  devoted  is  she  to  her  young. 

Scorpions  are  supposed  to  be  viviparous,  but 
Fabre  proves  that  their  young  come  into  the  world 
in  a  sort  of  soft  egg  like  a  snake's  egg,  and  have 
to  be  freed  and  cleansed  by  the  mother. 

He  tells,  too,  how  the  scorpion  family  is  brought 
into  the  world  in  July,  and  how  nearly  he  missed 
the  experience  because  some  great  naturalist  had 
said  the  time  was  September.  For  years,  he  de- 
clares, he  has  read  very  little.  He  prefers  the  book 
of  Nature  which  is  open  before  him  and  which  does 
not  lie.  Most  of  the  printed  books,  he  says,  even 
those  of  the  masters,  are  so  full  of  errors  that  he 
prefers  to  see  and  record  facts  for  himself. 

I  should  like  to  tell  of  Fabre's  other  activities  and 
wider  views.  There  is  an  interview  with  Pasteur  as 
a  young  man  which  is  a  masterpiece  of  kindly  ob- 
servation and  sunny  humor.  Fabre's  poetry,  too, 
should  be  described;  for  he  has  a  genuine  poetic 
gift,  childishly  simple  yet  touching,  with  a  rare  feel- 
ing both  for  the  color  of  words  and  their  rhythm. 


300      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

I  like  to  picture  him  as  he  sits  before  his  cottage; 
the  spare,  bent  figure;  the  wide,  soft  hat,  the  soft, 
white,  turned-down  collar  setting  off  the  clean- 
shaven face — a  finely  balanced  face  which  should 
have  been  drawn  by  Holbein,  with  its  broad  fore- 
head, strong  nose,  and  large,  firm  chin,  for  Hol- 
bein alone  could  give  us  the  effect  of  the  crow's-feet 
and  the  intent,  piercing  eyes,  made  small  as  if  to 
shutter  out  the  too  strong  light,  the  sharp  eyes 
which  are  yet  patient  and  at  bottom  sad,  very,  very 
sad. 

For  this  is  the  soul  of  the  great  searcher  after 
truth :  he  will  see  all  there  is  to  be  seen  and  brings 
to  the  task  infinite  courage  and  patience;  but  "van- 
ity of  vanities,  all  is  vanity"  is  to  him  the  sorrowful 
conclusion  of  the  whole  matter: 

"I  should  like  to  believe  in  progress/'  he  says,  "in  the 
gradual  growth  of  intelligence  from  plane  to  plane,  the 
progress  upwards  and  development ;  I  should  like  to  believe 
in  it  if  I  could ;  but  I  can't.  .  .  . 

"I  find  God  in  my  own  heart  more  clearly  than  anywhere 
in  the  outside  world.  .  .  . 

"The  world  I  have  studied  is  a  tiny  world,  and  yet  this 
little  patch  of  life  is  an  infinite  ocean,  still  unsounded  and 
full  of  undiscovered  secrets.  The  light  penetrates  a  little 
way  below  the  surface;  but  lower  down  all  is  darkness  and 
silence,  abyss  opening  into  abyss.  .  .  . 

"Success  in  this  world  is  to  the  noisy  and  combative,  to 
those  who  talk  about  themselves  in  and  out  of  season  like 


FABRE  301 

cheap  jacks  at  a  fair:  they  become  known  because  they 
make  a  fuss." 

"But  have  you  reached  no  conclusion,  M.  Fabre?"  one 
asks.  "Does  no  hypothesis  lead  to  the  heart  of  the  mys- 
tery?" 

He  shakes  his  head.  "I  have  found  none.  To  science 
nature  is  an  enigma  without  a  solution.  Every  generation 
has  its  own  pet  hypothesis.  We  climb  over  the  crumbling 
ruins  of  forgotten  theories,  but  truth  always  escapes  us. 
We  have  no  net  with  which  to  capture  truth.  .  .  . 

"Are  we  not  even  a  mystery  to  each  other?  Nay,  is 
not  each  man  a  mystery  to  himself?  a  creature  of  infinite 
possibilities,  of  miserable  imperfect  achievement?" 

So  talks  a  very  wise  man  and  certainly  one  of 
the  best-read  In  the  book  of  Nature  of  whom  the 
centuries  have  left  us  any  record. 


MAURICE    MAETERLINCK 

THERE  is  nothing  very  new  to  be  said  of 
Maurice  Maeterlinck's  work.  While  still  a 
young  man  he  had  won  place  as  an  European  ce- 
lebrity. Plays  like  the  Princesse  Maleine  and  Pel- 
leas  et  Melisande  were  known  at  once  and  appre- 
ciated by  the  dozen  or  so  lettered  readers  who  are 
to  be  found  in  every  capital.  And  the  judgment  of 
these  refined  jurors  is  very  like  the  judgment  of 
posterity  in  sympathetic  comprehension. 

In  spite  of  these  early  successes  Maeterlinck  has 
gone  on  working,  and  in  La  Vie  des  Abeilles  and 
Le  Tresor  des  Humbles,  in  Monna  Fauna,  and  La 
Magdalena  he  has  given  record  of  the  various 
stages  of  his  soul's  growth.  Since  the  death  of 
Tolstoy  he  has  become  one  of  the  most  interesting 
figures  in  modern  Europe,  and  certainly  the  most 
popular.  Yet  when  one  surveys  the  whole  of  his 
work  one  is  tempted  to  doubt  whether  he  will  excite 
as  much  interest  twenty  years  hence.  His  most 
characteristic  and  perhaps  his  best  works  so  far 
are  La  Vie  des  Abeilles,  Le  Tresor  des  Humbles, 
and  the  play  La  Magdalena.    Is  there  in  them  that 

302 


MAURICE  MAETERLINCK         303 

fount  of  new  truth  or  rare  beauty  which  ensures 
perdurable  renown? 

The  boundaries  of  art  are  continually  being  ex- 
tended and  new  fields  added  to  her  glorious  do- 
main: Rousseau  and  Byron  made  descriptions  of 
natural  beauty  a  part  of  literature,  and  in  our  time 
the  rights  of  citizenship,  so  to  speak,  have  been 
conferred  on  the  so-called  lower  animals.  Fabre 
in  France  and,  in  lesser  degree,  Kipling  in  Eng- 
land have  dramatized  for  us  the  stories  of  speechless 
suffering  and  inarticulate  delight. 

This  growth  of  sympathy  and  appreciation  has 
its  own  peculiar  charm,  which  is  heightened  by  the 
novelty  of  the  appeal:  but  I  do  not  feel  sure  that 
the  work  done  in  these  outlying  new  fields  is  as 
valuable  and  enduring  as  work  done  at  the  centre. 
The  one  subject  for  the  artist  which  can  never 
grow  old,  or  fall  out  of  fashion  or  lose  its  pristine 
and  permanent  interest  for  us  all,  Is  man.  What- 
ever has  to  do  with  humanity  is  of  palmary  im- 
portance: the  heart  does  not  alter  or  change:  it  is 
the  same  yesterday,  today,  and  for  ever.  Paint  a 
picture  of  a  girl's  love  more  passionate  than  the 
Antigone,  call  her  Francesca  and  set  her  supernal 
radiance  in  the  gloom  of  the  Inferno,  or  christen 
her  Gretchen  and  condemn  her  to  madness  and 
prison,  still  the  picture  will  delight  every  one,  age 
after  age,  and  confer  immortality  on  its  author. 
Would  one  say  as  much  of  a  scene  which  describes 


304      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

the  loves  or  fears  or  hatreds  of  one  of  the  lower 
animals?    I  do  not  think  so. 

There  are  superb  qualities  in  the  Life  of  the 
Bees  by  Maeterlinck;  chapters  in  which  he  shows 
himself  a  great  naturalist;  others,  like  Le  Vol 
Nuptial,  in  which  he  unfolds  all  his  poetic  gift; 
but  one  never  thinks  of  rereading  the  book,  and 
as  soon  as  it  is  read  it  begins  to  fade  out  of  mem- 
ory. It  is  a  charming  and  informative  book  which 
we  are  delighted  to  have  read;  but  there  is  nothing 
of  permanent  interest  in  it,  no  pages  to  which  we 
can  return  again  and  again  with  thrilling  delight 
as  we  return  to  the  loves  of  Francesca  and  of 
Gretchen. 

Le  Tresor  des  Humbles  gives  us  the  measure  of 
the  writer.  In  his  earliest  dramas,  in  La  Princesse 
Maleine,  as  in  Pellcas  et  Mclisande,  Maeterlinck 
won  our  hearts  by  a  certain  mysticism,  a  northern 
atmosphere,  so  to  speak,  of  mist  which  lent  a 
vague  symbolism  and  spirituality  to  his  personages 
while  clothing  his  immaterial  imaginings  with  the 
majesty  of  purple  shadows. 

In  these  days  of  logical  and  clear  materialism 
when  even  a  poet  like  Matthew  Arnold  could 
write  "miracles  do  not  happen,"  though  it  would 
be  far  truer  and  more  scientifically  exact  to  say 
that  whatever  happens,  is  one  long  miracle,  Mae- 
terlinck's early  dramas  came  with  something  of  the 
force  of  a  revelation.     Somehow  or  other  he  had 


MAURICE  MAETERLINCK         305 

managed  to  drape  his  slight  and  Insubstantial  fig- 
ures with  the  magic  of  the  Beyond,  the  wonder  of 
the  Unknown,  and  all  hearts  beat  high  with  the 
hope  that  at  length  a  Prophet-seer  had  come  who 
might  give  us  an  adequate  interpretation  of  the  Di- 
vine, a  new  reading  of  the  myriad  new  and  unco- 
ordinated facts  of  our  unintelligible  life. 

La  Vie  des  Aheilles  brought  us  from  the  tiptoe 
of  expectance  to  a  more  reasonable  attitude,  and 
Monna  Fauna  and  the  translation  of  Macbeth 
keyed  our  hope  still  lower;  but  at  length  In  Le 
Tresor  des  Humbles  Maeterlinck  returned  to  his 
early  inspiration,  and  In  a  series  of  essays  gave  a 
reasoned  explanation  of  the  faith  that  Is  in  him. 
His  first  essay  consisted  of  an  elaboration  of  what 
Carlyle  and  Emerson  have  said  about  "Silence," 
with  a  slight  though  characteristic  addition: 
"Without  silence,"  Maeterlinck  says,  "love  Itself 
would  have  neither  savor  nor  perfume  of  eternity. 
We  have  all  known  those  sacred  moments  when 
lips  separate  and  souls  draw  together  without 
words:  we  should  seek  them  ceaselessly.  (//  faut 
les  rechercher  sans  cesse.)  There  is  no  silence  so 
docile  as  this  silence  of  love,  and  in  truth  It  Is  the 
only  silence  which  belongs  to  us  mortals.  The 
other  great  silences  of  death  and  dolor  and  des- 
tiny are  not  under  our  control." 

The  greater  part  of  this  Treasury  of  the  Hum- 
ble is  made  up  of  essays  on  some  of  the  great  mys- 


3o6      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

tics,  on  Ruysbroeck,  on  Novalls,  on  Emerson.  I 
should  like  to  be  able  to  say  that  Maeterlinck  had 
added  something  to  this  great  Temple  of  the 
Spirit;  but  I  have  not  found  a  single  addition,  nor 
even  an  explanation  of  any  obscure  statement. 
Maeterlinck  is  content  simply  to  restate  this  or  that 
thought  which  has  pleased  him  and  so  to  furnish 
himself  with  a  suit  of  clothes,  so  to  speak,  pieced 
together  from  various  royal  wardrobes.  It  is  true 
he  does  realize  that  the  soul  has  a  speech  of  its 
own;  but  he  calls  its  speech  silence;  whereas  silence 
is  only  a  condition,  and  not  even  a  necessary  con- 
dition, of  its  audibility.    I  prefer  Swinburne's  word: 

Eyesight  and  speech  he  wrought 
As  veils  of  the  soul  therein 

But  just  because  Maeterlinck  feels  these  elemental 
truths  his  language  now  and  then  assumes  a  pecu- 
liar pathos  and  wins  a  new  spiritual  significance. 
He  tells  us  that  "the  souls  of  all  our  brethren  are 
perpetually  following  us  about  mutely  imploring 
from  us  some  sign  of  recognition,  some  kiss  of  sym- 
pathy. But  most  of  us  never  dare  to  reply  to  the 
beseeching  invocation.  It  is  the  misfortune  of  our 
existence  that  we  thus  live  separated  from  our  souls 
and  fearful  or  ashamed  of  their  tremulous  noble  de- 
sires." But  how  different  this  tentative  statement  is 
from  the  language  of  the  true  seers,  how  different 


MAURICE  MAETERLINCK  307 

and  how  inferior;  how  pale  and  weak  and  hesitating. 
Maeterlinck  is  certain  that  "the  writings  of  the  mys- 
tics contain  some  of  the  purest  and  most  brilliant 
gems  in  the  treasure-house  of  humanity,"  but  he  has 
not  added  to  the  store :  he  is  a  Moses,  so  to  speak, 
to  whom  it  has  not  been  given  to  enter  the  Prom- 
ised Land.  He  can  only  survey  it  from  afar,  and 
his  account  of  it  is  of  hearsay  and  not  of  direct 
vision;  it  is  that  of  a  stranger,  and  not  that  of  one 
of  God's  spies. 

But  perhaps  in  suggesting  this  qualification  we  are 
asking  too  much  of  the  artist:  it  is  certain  that  Mae- 
terlinck is  at  his  best  when  creating  and  not  criti- 
cizing or  reporting.  His  play  of  the  Magdalene 
touches  a  higher  note  than  he  has  reached  in  any 
essay.  The  story  as  he  tells  it  is  of  the  simplest. 
The  "Magdalene"  is  pursued  by  a  Roman  general, 
who  proposes  to  her  the  usual  bargain  of  the 
French  stage :  "If  you  will  give  yourself  to  me,"  he 
says  roundly,  "your  prophet,  Jesus,  shall  be  set  at 
liberty."  The  woman  hesitates  for  a  while;  but  at 
length  tells  her  importunate  suitor  that  what  he  sug- 
gests is  out  of  the  question.  "It  is  the  Prophet  him- 
self," she  declares,  "who  has  made  all  such  bargains 
for  ever  impossible  and  shameful."  By  virtue  of 
this  one  beautiful  word,  the  "Magdalene"  of  Mae- 
terlinck lifts  us  to  reconciliation  and  a  serener  air. 

With  the  exception  of  recent  photographs,  the 
best  likeness  of  Maeterlinck,  I  think,  is  that  carica- 


3o8      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

ture  by  Max  Beerbohm  which  appeared  some  years 
ago,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  in  Vanity  Fair.  Every 
one  knows  the  presentment  of  the  big  stout  man  in 
Norfolk  jacket,  knickerbockers  and  gaiters,  with  a 
lighted  cigar  in  his  hand  and  an  air  of  infantile  as- 
tonishment on  the  chubby  face  with  the  embryonic 
moustache  and  bulging  forehead.  There  is  some- 
thing ineffective,  childlike,  yet  lumbering,  in  the  ex- 
pression, and  a  something  truculent  as  well,  and  this 
truculence  is  rendered  subtly  enough  by  the  left  hand 
thrust  deep  in  the  pocket  of  the  knickers,  and  by  the 
heavy  thumb  which  holds  aloft  the  lighted  cigar. 

Maeterlinck's  writings  do  not  prepare  one  for 
fumbling  ineffectiveness,  and  still  less  for  truculence : 
the  tone  of  them  is  uniformly  persuasive.  Ingratia- 
ting, poetic,  so  much  so  Indeed  that  when  you  meet 
the  man  you  are  apt  to  be  a  little  surprised  by  his 
self-assured  manner,  which  Is  prone  to  become  a 
trifle  aggressive  as  of  on£  not  sure  of  his  high  place. 
I  shall  now  tell  of  my  meetings  with  Maeterlinck  and 
try  to  render  the  Impression  his  personality  made 
upon  me. 

Maeterlinck  Is  easily  described:  a  broad  Fleming 
of  about  five  feet  nine  in  height,  inclined  to  be  stout; 
silver  hair  lends  distinction  to  the  large  round  head 
and  boyish  fresh  complexion;  blue-grey  eyes,  now 
thoughtful,  now  merry,  and  an  unaffected  off-hand 
manner.  The  features  are  not  cut,  left  rather  "in 
the  rough,"  as  sculptors  say,  even  the  heavy  jaw  and 


MAURICE  MAETERLINCK  309 

chin  are  drowned  in  fat;  the  forehead  bulges  and 
the  eyes  lose  color  in  the  light  and  seem  hard;  still, 
an  interesting  and  attractive  personality. 

Maeterlinck's  qualities  show  themselves  quickly. 
He  is  very  ingenuous  and  sincere  not  to  say  simple, 
and  quite  content  to  dismiss  this  subject  or  that  with 
the  ordinary  ready-made  conclusion: 

"All  translations  are  bad,  and  resemble  the  orig- 
inal as  monkeys  resemble  men.  When  you  trans- 
late Bernard  Shaw  into  French  he  loses  all  spice; 
when  I  see  something  of  mine  in  English  I  hardly 
recognize  it.  You  think  my  translation  of  Macbeth 
poor,"  he  went  on;  "I  only  did  It  because  that  of 
Frangois  Victor  Hugo  seemed  to  me  wretched;  but 
then,  you  know,  no  Frenchman  can  understand 
Shakespeare,  just  as  no  Englishman  understands 
Racine." 

I  ventured  to  remark  that  worse  had  been  said 
about  Racine  by  French  judges  than  by  English: 
Joubert,  for  Instance,  dismissed  him  contemptuously 
as  "the  Virgil  of  vulgar  people";  but  Maeterlinck 
would  not  have  It:  "A  great  poet  .  .  .  exquisite 
verses  .  .  .  unforgettable  melodies."  Such  com- 
placent platitudes  did  away  with  even  the  wish  to 
argue. 

In  the  first  half-hour's  talk  I  noticed  two  pecu- 
liarly French  traits  In  Maeterlinck  which  both  have 
their  root,  I  imagine,  In  a  certain  uneasy  vanity. 
He  loves  to  pick  holes  In  his  most  famous  contem- 


3IO      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

poraries  and  to  make  fun  of  their  weak  points.  We 
were  talking  of  the  success  of  his  wife  (Georgette 
Leblanc)  In  Ibsen's  Masterhuilder:  some  one  hap- 
pened to  remark  that  It  was  a  great  play. 

"A  great  playwright,  I  should  prefer  to  say," 
corrected  Maeterlinck,  "on  the  strength  of  a  single 
fine  play,  Ghosts.  The  Masterhuilder  seemed  to  me 
a  little  ridiculous;  that  'higher,'  'higher,'  Is  really  ir- 
resistibly comic.  During  the  rehearsals  we  all  held 
our  sides,  aching  with  laughter;  but  it  went  all  right, 
I  confess." 

"Yes;  It  went  all  right,"  and  the  grotesque  ele- 
ment in  it  was  only  visible  to  envious  eyes.  But 
Maeterlinck  loves  to  hlaguer,  though  he  ought  to 
know  that  the  gods  veil  themselves  from  the  pro- 
fane and  are  not  to  be  seen  by  those  who  would  hold 
them  up  to  ridicule. 

The  second  characteristic  which  Maeterlinck 
shares  with  most  Frenchmen,  and,  indeed,  with 
nearly  all  the  Latins,  is  a  habit  more  easily  forgiven. 
We  were  all  talking  of  boxing;  the  French  cham- 
pion, Carpentier,  had  just  beaten  the  English  mid- 
dle-weight champion,  Sullivan,  In  a  fight  at  Monte 
Carlo,  and  beaten  him  with  the  utmost  ease.  To 
my  astonishment  Maeterlinck  proclaimed  himself  a 
devotee  of  the  art — "a  splendid  exercise,"  he  said, 
"which  I  practise  three  or  four  times  a  week."  And 
incited,  perhaps,  by  a  desire  to  rebuke  my  in- 
credulity, he  announced  his  intention,  after  lunch,  of 


MAURICE  MAETERLINCK         311 

going  "to  box  hard  for  an  hour  or  so."  The  idea 
of  a  stout  man  of  fifty,  after  a  copious  lunch,  going 
out  to  box  struck  me  as  somewhat  ludicrous,  though 
I  should  not  like  to  say  it  was  impossible  if  the  pro- 
fessional antagonist  were  well  "tipped"  and  gifted 
with  a  sense  of  humor. 

When  not  engaged  in  keeping  up  his  reputation 
for  strength  of  body  and  biting  wit,  Maeterlinck 
was  very  interesting.  When  one  asked  him  which 
of  his  works  he  liked  the  best,  he  replied  that  he 
never  looked  at  any  of  them  after  publication. 
"Only  a  dog  goes  back  to  his  vomit,"  he  said. 
"Once  the  thing  Is  done,  it  has  no  further  interest 
for  me." 

The  question,  "What  are  you  working  at  now?" 
brought  the  answer  that  at  fifty  it  was  very  hard  to 
begin  any  "really  important  work.  Though  I  feel 
as  well  as  ever  I  did,"  he  went  on,  "I  know  that  In 
the  nature  of  things  I  cannot  expect  a  much  longer 
lease  of  health:  the  blow  may  fall  at  any  time,  or 
may  be  delayed  for  ten  years;  but  It  is  pretty  sure 
to  fall  soon,  and  why  should  one  begin  to  build  a 
ship  which  may  never  reach  the  sea?" 

"Cervantes,"  I  replied,  "did  his  best  work  after 
sixty,  and  some  of  Goethe's  finest  lyrics  were  writ- 
ten when  he  was  over  seventy;  why  should  you  wish 
to  close  the  book  at  fifty?" 

"Those  were  giants,"  he  Interjected,  "and  excep- 
tions.   Besides,  I  have  no  wish  whatever  to  close  the 


312      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

book:  I  love  life,  and  I  go  on  working  steadily:  I 
only  say  that  I'd  find  it  very  difficult  now  to  begin 
any  important  book.  I  mean  by  that,"  he  added 
hastily,  "a  book  which  would  need  a  considerable 
time  to  complete." 

"As  a  matter  of  fact,"  he  went  on,  "I  am  even 
now  working  at  a  sort  of  faery  tale,  trying  to  ex- 
press the  inexpressible,  to  realize  the  immaterial 
and  give  form  to  pure  fantasy,  and  so  suggest  at 
least  meanings  beyond  the  reach  of  words." 

The  Maeterlinck  who  spoke  in  that  way  is  the 
same  man  who  wrote  in  youth  the  early  mystical 
dramas,  and  in  maturity  Le  Tresor  des  Humbles 
and  La  Magdalena,  the  man  who,  in  spite  of  many 
weaknesses,  has  always  at  command  the  seduction  of 
the  poet  and  a  breath,  at  least  of  the  prophet's  in- 
spiration. 

And  how  infinitely  sincerer  this  simple  confes- 
sion of  his  purpose  is  than  the  habit  practised  by 
most  English  writers  of  depreciating  their  art,  and 
the  ardor  with  which  they  give  themselves  to  its 
service. 

We  have  only  to  compare  this  confession  of  Mae- 
terlinck with  a  characteristic  utterance  of  one  of  the 
standard-bearers  of  the  preceding  generation  to 
realize  at  once  the  distance  we  have  travelled  in  the 
last  twenty  years.  In  an  interesting  article  on  La 
Voyante  and  Lourdes,  which  appeared  in  1896, 
Zola  suddenly  exclaimed  impatiently: 


MAURICE  MAETERLINCK         313 

"Ah!  cette  soif  de  I'Au-dela,  ce  hesoin  du  dhin." 
(Ah,  this  thirst  for  the  Beyond,  this  need  of  the 
divine.) 

But  instead  of  studying  this  extraordinary  phe- 
nomenon; instead  of  asking  himself  whether  this 
need  in  human  nature,  this  perpetual  desire  for  the 
divine  is  not  as  essential  as  the  need  of  food  (for 
man  does  not  live  by  bread  alone)  the  great  realist 
concluded  simply  that  the  hope  was  a  mirage,  the 
thirst  imaginary,  the  longing  a  delusion. 

And  now  towards  the  end  of  his  life  Maurice 
Maeterlinck  is  tormented  by  the  obsession  just  to 
give  artistic  form  to  this  obscure  and  persistent  de- 
sire which  Is  stronger  than  the  reason  and  more  en- 
during, the  thirst  for  something  beyond  ourselves 
and  above — the  sons  of  men  dimly  realising  at 
length  that  they  are  in  very  sooth,  the  sons,  too, 
of  God. 


RODIN 

A  BOOK  has  just  been  published  about  Rodin 
and  his  work  by  a  M.  Gsell.  It  is  an  admi- 
rable piece  of  work,  and  shows  us  the  very  soul  of 
the  great  sculptor  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Rodin 
is  not  very  articulate,  words  not  being  his  medium. 
M.  Gsell  has  drawn  him  out  and  interpreted  him 
with  singular  sympathy  and  understanding.  As  I 
have  known  Rodin  for  twenty-five  years,  and  regard 
him  as  one  in  the  line  of  great  French  sculptors — a 
worthy  successor  to  Houdon  and  Rude  and  Barye — 
and  certainly  the  greatest  of  living  sculptors,  I  shall 
use  M.  Gsell's  book  as  a  sort  of  outline  sketch  for 
my  portrait  of  the  master. 

Rodin  is  to  me  the  creature  of  his  works:  the 
bodily  presentment  even  is  a  true  symbol  of  his 
soul:  a  French  peasant  in  figure — a  short,  broad 
man  with  heavy  shoulders,  thick  thighs,  and  great, 
powerful  hands.  There  is  realistic  likeness  in 
Tweed's  bust.  The  neck  is  short  and  thick,  the  nose 
large  and  fleshy,  the  forehead  high  but  retreating, 
the  eyes  grey,  by  turns  reflective  and  observant. 
There  is  an  air  of  transparent  sincerity  about  the 
sturdy  little  man,  with  his  careless  grey  beard  and 

314 


-^^is: 


1 


RODIN  315 

worn  clothes.  Always  I  see  the  large,  strong  hands, 
the  short  neck  and  lumpy  shoulders — a  master 
craftsman  with  a  tremendous  sensual  endowment. 

The  first  chapters  of  this  book  are  weak,  but 
when  Rodin  talks  of  "the  science  of  modelling"  he 
begins  to  hold  us.  He  learnt  it  when  a  young  man, 
it  appears,  from  a  fellow-workman  who  taught  him 
to  model  the  human  figure  as  if  the  surface  were 
pushed  out  from  the  inside.  There  is  no  flat  part 
of  a  body;  it  is  all  hills  and  valleys:  this  to  him  is 
the  secret  of  modelling,  and  he  declares  that  this 
was  the  practice  of  the  Greeks,  the  only  method 
which  makes  every  statue  a  picture  In  black  and 
white.  No  etching,  he  asserts,  has  such  a  boldness 
of  light  or  such  a  velvety  depth  of  shadow,  as  a 
well-modelled  statue:  "By  such  modelling  the  mas- 
terpieces of  sculpture  take  on  the  radiant  aspect  of 
living  flesh." 

The  fourth  chapter  is  still  more  interesting,  be- 
cause it  brings  out  a  modern  phase  of  the  eternal 
conflict  in  art  between  what  is  beautiful  and  what  is 
true.  Gsell  asks  him  about  his  "L'Homme  qui 
Marche."  Rodin  begins  by  declaring  that  he  want- 
ed to  render  life,  and  life  is  movement.  "I  have 
hardly  ever,"  he  adds,  "represented  complete  re- 
pose. .  .  .  Fine  modelling  and  mov^ement  are  the 
two  master  qualities  of  good  sculpture."  But  the 
moment  the  pair  begin  to  study  Rodin's  "L'Homme 
qui  Marche"  they  both  notice  that  the  movement  is 


3i6      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

not  true,  that  the  man  has  both  feet  on  the  ground 
at  the  same  time,  whereas  In  walking  one  foot  Is 
always  just  leaving  the  ground  as  the  other  reaches 
It.  A  better  Illustration  still  occurs  to  Rodin.  He 
takes  the  picture  of  Gerlcault  In  the  Louvre,  the 
famous  "Racing  at  Epsom."  Gerlcault  represents 
the  horses  galloping,  according  to  the  French  ex- 
pression, ventre  a  terre — the  front  legs  outstretched 
In  front  and  the  hind  legs  outstretched  behind. 
Now  instantaneous  photography  teaches  us  that  this 
Is  not  in  accordance  with  fact.  Before  the  front 
legs  touch  the  ground  the  hind  legs  have  already 
been  drawn  up  in  preparation  for  the  next  spring; 
so  that  If  you  picture  a  galloping  horse  properly  you 
picture  it  with  all  four  legs  bunched  together,  the 
hind  ones  unnaturally  drawn  up  underneath  the 
stomach,  almost  overtaking  the  front  ones,  which 
are  just  leaving  the  ground.  In  fact,  the  animal 
seems  to  be  caught  In  the  act  of  jumping  with  Its 
legs  all  hobbled  together.  Rodin  immediately  puts 
the  matter  properly:  our  eyes  do  not  give  us  the 
truth  of  things.  When  we  see  a  man  walking  we 
see  both  his  feet  on  the  ground;  when  we  see  a  horse 
galloping  we  first  see  his  fore  legs  thrown  out  in 
front  and  then  his  hind  legs  stretched  out  behind; 
and  thus  we  represent  him  to  ourselves.  The  expres- 
sion ventre  a  terre  Is  true  to  our  vision  though  false 
to  fact.  And  the  apparent  truth  is  all  that  matters 
to  the  artist. 


RODIN  317 

The  two  collaborators  discuss  other  interesting 
problems.  Rodin  insists  that  both  painting  and 
sculpture  can  represent  action  to  a  much  greater  ex- 
tent than  is  commonly  supposed,  and  he  takes  for 
example  his  own  figures  the  "Bourgeois  of  Calais" 
and  the  masterpiece  of  Watteau,  "L'Embarquement 
pour  Cythere."  His  criticism  of  Watteau's  master- 
piece is  an  exercise  in  eulogistic  analysis.  The 
painter  begins,  he  says,  on  the  right,  by  showing  a 
lover  kneeling  to  his  mistress  and  trying  to  persuade 
her  to  accompany  him.  A  little  more  towards  the 
centre  another  gallant  is  helping  his  mistress  to  her 
feet,  as  if  they  were  just  about  to  start;  and  so  on. 
Below  these  figures  on  the  knoll,  and  nearer  the 
water's  edge,  a  crowd  of  people  are  going  towards 
the  boat,  the  women  as  eager  as  the  men.  Rodin 
has  nothing  but  praise  for  this  conception,  declares 
that  the  picture  is  a  masterpiece — "un  ravissement 
qii'on  ne  pent  oublier." 

This  praise  is  fairly  deserved  if  we  look  only  at 
the  painting  or  even  at  the  drawing  of  the  various 
figures  and  groups;  but,  architecturally  considered, 
"L'Embarquement  pour  Cythere"  is  anything  but  a 
wonder-work.  The  whole  movement  takes  place 
from  right  to  left  of  the  picture,  whereas  it  should 
proceed  from  left  to  right.  It  is  probably  our  habit 
of  writing  and  reading  which  makes  it  much  easier 
for  us  to  follow  motion  from  left  to  right  than  from 
right  to  left.     I  have  always  felt  a  certain  incon- 


3i8      CONTEMPORARY    PORTRAITS 

venience  in  regarding  this  masterpiece  of  Watteau. 
The  action  of  the  picture  should  have  begun  on  the 
left,  and  the  eye  would  then  have  passed  naturally 
towards  the  right  from  group  to  group  instead  of 
unnaturally  and  with  a  certain  effort  as  it  does  now. 

I  find  a  similar  want  of  thought  in  the  much- 
bepraised  French  coinage  of  today:  the  medal  of 
the  woman  sowing  is  effective  and  well  modelled; 
but  the  artist  presents  her  with  her  hair  flowing  out 
straight  behind  as  if  she  were  sowing  against  a  gale 
— a  feat  always  avoided  in  actual  life. 

In  the  fifth  chapter  Rodin's  gift  as  a  draughtsman 
is  discussed.  It  is  not  sufficiently  known  that  Rodin 
makes  hundreds  of  sketches  both  with  pencil  and 
with  wash  of  color.  Some  of  these  drawings  are 
among  his  boldest  and  most  characteristic  work. 
"Ordinary  people  don't  understand  them,"  he  says; 
"but  ordinary  people  can  never  know  anything  about 
Art.  ...  In  all  crafts  truth  and  simplicity  are  the 
master  qualities."  And  then  he  goes  deeper:  "Col- 
or and  drawing — style  at  its  best — is  nothing  but 
a  means  to  display  the  soul  of  the  artist.  It  is  the 
soul  one  ought  to  try  to  know;  artists  should  be 
classed  according  to  the  soul." 

The  seventh  chapter  is  taken  up  with  a  superb 
criticism  of  the  great  French  sculptor  Houdon,  to 
whom  we  owe  a  number  of  busts  of  celebrated  men, 
such  as  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  Franklin,  Mirabeau, 
and  Napoleon — heads  which  might  really  be  con- 


RODIN  319 

sidered  Memoirs  of  the  time.  Nothing  on  Vol- 
taire, nothing  on  MIrabeau  (not  even  Carlyle's 
study) ,  nothing  on  Napoleon  has  yet  been  written 
more  soul-revealing  than  the  busts  of  Houdon. 
Rodin,  too,  In  this  field  has  done  memorable  things; 
his  Rochefort,  Hugo,  Berthelot,  Puvis  de  Cha- 
vannes  and  Balzac  are  all  superb,  worthy  to  rank 
with  the  best.  Just  here,  however,  a  certain  bitter- 
ness comes  to  show  In  him : 

There  is  no  work  (he  says)  so  ungrateful  as  this:  the 
truer  your  portrait,  the  more  like  it  is,  the  more  it  reveals 
character,  the  less  your  sitter  will  appreciate  it.  Men  and 
women  both  want  to  have  insignificant,  regular  features; 
masterpieces  of  expression  are  usually  regarded  as  insults. 
One  has  simply  to  do  one's  best  and  pay  no  attention  to  the 
remonstrances  of  puerile  conceit. 

Like  all  the  great  moderns,  Rodin  Is  often  pre- 
occupied not  with  the  subject,  but  the  symbol.  He 
has  fashioned  the  head  of  a  young  woman  Impris- 
oned to  the  very  neck  In  a  rough  block  of  marble. 
"Thought"  he  christens  It — thought  struggling  for 
expression,  without  hands  to  help  Itself,  thwarted 
and  imprisoned  as  one  without  feet.  Or  take  "Illu- 
sion, the  Daughter  of  Icarus" — a  young  angel's  fig- 
ure with  broken  wing  and  face  crushed  against  the 
hard  ground  of  fact.  No  one  of  these  attempts.  In 
my  opinion,  can  be  called  successful,  simply  because 
the   striving  Itself,   being  purely   Intellectual,   tran- 


320      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

scends  the  sculptor's  art.     Two  lines  of  Goethe  are 

more  expressive: 

All  things  transitory  but  as  symbols  are  sent; 
Earth's  insufficiency  leads  to  event.  .  .  . 

Rodin  is  more  successful  when  he  asserts  that  all 
artists  are  necessarily  religious,  "believers  by  na- 
ture" : 

No  good  sculptor  (he  says)  can  model  a  human  figure 
without  dwelling  on  the  mystery  of  life;  this  individual 
and  that  in  fleeting  variation  only  remind  him  of  the 
immanent  type;  he  is  led  perpetually  from  the  creature  to 
the  creator.  .  .  .  All  the  best  work  of  any  artist  must  be 
bathed,  so  to  speak,  in  mystery.  That  is  why  many  of  my 
figures  have  a  hand  or  foot  still  imprisoned  in  the  marble- 
block;  life  is  everywhere,  but  rarely  indeed  does  it  come 
to  complete  expression  or  the  individual  to  perfect  free- 
dom. .  .  . 

Then  Rodin  goes  on  to  tell  how  as  a  youth  he 
fell  in  love  with  the  serene  and  typical  beauty  of 
the  works  of  Phidias,  and  only  later,  after  his  first 
visit  to  Italy,  came  to  appreciate  the  tortured  striv- 
ings of  Michelangelo.  The  great  Florentine,  he 
exclaims,  was  the  last  and  greatest  of  Gothic  sculp- 
tors. Like  all  great  creators,  Rodin  is  one  of  the 
most  stimulating  of  critics,  and  in  especial  he  finds 
deathless  words  to  describe  the  Greeks,  his  masters. 
It  is  the  accepted  idea  that  the  Greeks  of  the  best 


RODIN  321 

period  treated  their  subjects  with  reverence  as  gods 
and  goddesses,  and  showed  their  piety  by  only  un- 
veiling part  of  the  human  figure.  While  admitting 
that  there  is  some  little  truth  in  this,  Rodin  insists 
that  the  spirit  informing  all  their  best  work  is  an 
intense  sensuality.  "The  human  form,"  he  says, 
"never  moved  any  people  to  such  sensual  tenderness. 
The  very  ecstasy  of  sensual  delight  seems  to  be  shed 
over  every  part  of  the  figures  they  modelled."  And 
any  one  who  has  ever  studied  the  little  women's  fig- 
ures with  clinging  draperies  on  the  balustrade  of  the 
Temple  of  Nike  Apteros  must  agree  with  him. 
Passionate  desire  is  the  very  soul  of  Greek  plastic 
art. 

And  here  comes  naturally  that  chapter  on  "The 
Beauty  of  Women,"  which  should  be  at  the  end  of 
this  book,  and  not  in  the  middle,  if  the  true  cres- 
cendo of  interest  is  to  be  observed,  for  this  is 
Rodin's  special  kingdom.  No  decadent  artist  of 
them  all,  no  master  of  the  Renaissance,  has  equalled 
him  in  this  field  either  as  craftsman  or  lover, 
whether  in  skill  of  workmanship  or  in  passionate 
appreciation  of  the  loveliness  of  every  curve  and 
every  round.  His  best  girl-figures  are  the  best  ever 
modelled. 

Rodin  has  now  several  studios,  both  at  his  home 
in  Meudon  and  in  Paris,  but  the  one  he  prefers  is 
in  the  old  and  famous  Hotel  de  Biron,  which  for 
ages  was  used  as  the  Couvent  du  Sacre-Coeur.    Here 


322      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

generations  of  lovely  and  charming  girls  were  edu- 
cated, and  from  this  retreat  sent  forth  into  the  sin- 
ful world.  Behind  the  hotel  is  an  old,  neglected 
garden,  with  trees  and  arbors  and  winding  walks. 
In  the  shade  here  one  still  seems  to  hear  the  ripple  of 
girl  laughter,  or  sees  hot  cheeks  flushing  with  whis- 
pered confidences.  Looking  out  over  this  garden 
is  the  great  room  which  Rodin  keeps  for  his  draw- 
ings and  modellings  of  women.  Let  us  listen  to  him 
on  his  own  subject.  Gsell  asks  him:  "Is  it  easy 
to  find  beautiful  models?"  Rodin  answers:  "Yes." 
"Does  the  figure  keep  its  beauty  for  long?"  The 
master  replies : 

"It  changes  incessantly,  as  a  landscape  changes  with 
the  sun.  The  perfect  bloom  of  youth,  the  flower-time  when 
the  slight  figure  is  as  graceful  as  the  stem  of  a  lily,  only 
lasts  for  a  few  short  months.  .  .  .  The  young  girl  becomes 
a  woman  and  her  beauty  changes  its  character — admirable 
still,  it  is  perhaps  not  quite  so  lovely  pure." 

"Do  you  think  the  Greeks  were  more  beautiful  than  mod- 
ern women,  or  have  you  as  fine  models  as  posed  for  Phi- 
dias?" 

"Just  as  fine.  Modern  Italian  girls  have  all  the  pecu- 
liarities of  the  best  Greek  type:  the  essential  character  of 
it  is  that  the  shoulders  are  practically  as  broad  as  the  hips." 

"But  our  French  women?" 

"Generally,  like  the  Germanic  races  and  the  Russians, 
they  have  narrow  shoulders  and  large  hips:  this  is  the 
characteristic  of  the  nymphs  of  Goujon,  the  Venus  of  W»t- 
tcau,  the  Diana  of  Houdon." 


RODIN  323 

"WTiich  is  the  most  beautiful  type  ?" 

"Who  shall  say?  There  are  hundreds  of  beautiful  types. 
I  have  modelled  little  Eastern  dancers  whose  finger-slim 
ankles  and  soft  round  outlines  had  an  infinite  and  perverse 
seduction.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Japanese  actress  Ha- 
nako  seemed  to  have  no  fat  on  her  body;  her  muscles  were 
all  outlined  and  firm  like  those  of  a  little  fox-terrier.  She 
was  so  strong  that  she  could  stand  on  one  foot  and  hold 
the  other  leg  at  right  angles  with  her  body  for  ever  so 
long;  she  seemed  to  take  root  in  the  ground  like  a  tree; 
but  there  was  a  rare  beauty  in  her  singular  vigour.  There 
is  nothing  commoner  than  beauty  for  those  who  have  eyes 
to  see.  ...  I  often  get  a  girl  to  sit  on  the  ground  just  to 
study  the  adorable  vase-like  outlines  of  her  torso,  the  sacred 
amphora  which  holds  in  it  the  promise  of  future  life.  Look 
at  that  shoulder:  I  have  modelled  the  curve  of  it  a  dozen 
times  and  yet  it  could  be  improved.  Often  and  often 
beauty  overpowers  me  so  that  I  feel  like  going  on  my 
knees  to  it.     His  art  is  a  religion  to  the  artist." 

And  here  is  Rodin's  contribution  to  social  sci- 
ence: 

"Ah,  they  pretend  that  Art  has  not  utility:  It  has 
the  greatest;  everything  that  makes  for  happiness  is  of 
the  highest  usefulness.  And  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that 
we  artists  are  the  only  moderns  who  take  joy  in  our  work 
and  find  delight  in  labour.  Every  workman  ought  to  be 
an  artist,  and  take  pleasure  in  his  toil;  every  mason  and 
carpenter  and  house-painter  should  have  joy  in  his  en- 
deavour; but  with  our   wretched  modern  wage-system  we 


324      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

have  almost  banished  joy  out  of  life.     It  will  come  back; 
we  artists  will  brins:  it  back." 


A  memorable  book,  which  sends  me  to  have  a 
look  at  that  "Satyr  and  Nymph,"  which  is  one  of 
the  high-water  marks,  so  to  speak,  of  Rodin's 
achievement:  a  masterwork  in  which  desire  finds 
supreme  expression  and  bronze  takes  on  the  satin- 
softness  of  woman's  flesh. 

I  should  like  to  connect  whatever  intimate  facts 
I  have  gleaned  about  Rodin  during  our  long  friend- 
ship with  these  words  of  his  on  the  utility  of  art,  for 
they  are  curiously  self-revealing.  He  told  me  that 
his  beginnings  were  terribly  difficult;  for  years  he 
had  to  work  as  a  stone-cutter  for  makers  of  figures 
to  stand  over  graves.  This  practice  made  him  ca- 
pable of  cutting  a  statue  out  of  a  block  of  marble  like 
the  sculptors  of  the  renascence;  "not  many  modern 
artists  can  do  that,"  he  used  to  say.  The  long  ap- 
prenticeship had  made  him  a  great  craftsman. 

Even  after  he  had  produced  his  "Man  With  the 
Broken  Nose,"  which  was  hailed  as  a  masterpiece 
by  all  the  critics  in  Paris,  he  had  to  go  back  to  jour- 
neyman's work  for  months  at  a  time  in  order  to 
earn  money  to  buy  marble.  "The  worst  of  it  Is," 
he  exclaimed,  "that  in  those  years  I  was  full  of 
ideas,  pregnant  with  a  thousand  conceptions  which 
never  saw  the  light.  This  stupid  modern  competi- 
tive wage-system  is  a  dreadful  handicap  to  the  real 


RODIN  325 

artist.  I  could  have  done  twice  as  much  good  work 
as  I  have  done  had  I  received  as  a  young  man  a 
tenth  part  of  the  prices  which  are  pressed  upon  me 
now  when  I  have  few  ideas  and  can  only  work  slowly. 
I  don't  believe  I  should  ever  have  got  through  and 
done  anything  worth  doing  if  it  hadn't  been  for 
English  amateurs;  they  bought  my  works  long  be- 
fore they  were  saleable  in  Paris.  'A  prophet,'  you 
know,  'is  not  without  honor  save  in  his  own  coun- 
try.' 

"There's  another  point  of  general  interest,  It 
seems  to  me.  i\s  soon  as  I  became  known  I  was 
tempted  to  do  portrait-busts  and  nothing  but  por- 
traits, by  the  enormous  sums  offered  me  by  iVmerican 
millionaires  and  their  wives.  I  wanted  to  do  ideal 
works,  my  work;  but  I  was  taken  away  very  often 
by  this  meaningless  portraiture  that's  only  another 
form  of  journeyman's  work.  How  can  you  refuse 
a  man  who  offers  you  a  blank  cheque?  It's  the  most 
devilish  age  for  the  artist,  that  has  ever  been." 

Before  beginning  this  pen-portrait  I  said  that 
Rodin  was  inarticulate,  words  not  being  his  medium, 
harder,  indeed,  for  him  to  control  than  bronze  or 
marble.  He  has  often  brought  me  groups  of  fig- 
ures and  asked  me  to  name  them :  he  had  put  a  couple 
of  figures  together  because  of  some  emotional  or 
passionate  connection  and  he  wanted  a  name  for 
them:  "Could  they  stand  for  any  myth?"  I  re- 
member one  group,  a  woman's  figure  embracing  a 


326      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

man  which  I  called  La  Succiihe  and  bought.  He 
liked  the  name,  but  when  I  spoke  of  it  at  another 
time  as  "The  Temptation  of  St.  Antony,"  he  was 
still  more  delighted  and  declared  that  he  would 
make  a  large  replica  of  it. 

He  spoke  only  French  and  even  in  French  was  not 
widely  read,  yet  like  all  big  men,  he  knew  a  great 
deal  about  masterpieces  in  other  arts  of  which  he 
didn't  know  even  the  grammar.  When  looking  at 
his  "Gate  of  Hell"  he  would  be  a  bold  man  who 
would  say  that  he  knew  Dante  better  than  Rodin 
and  yet  Rodin  had  never  read  a  word  of  the  In- 
ferno. 

Rodin's  life  in  the  villa  perched  on  the  side  of 
the  hill  at  Meudon  was  that  of  the  ordinary  French 
bourgeois:  his  wife,  who  was  about  his  own  age, 
looked  after  the  house  and  kitchen  while  he  received 
some  of  the  greatest  people  in  the  world  in  the  little 
parlor.  It  seemed  to  me  that  though  proud  of  his 
work,  she  was  more  concerned  with  his  health. 

In  his  later  life  Rodin  was  cruelly  disappointed 
by  the  rejection  of  his  "Balzac,"  ordered  but  not 
accepted  by  the  French  Society  of  Gens  des  lettres. 
That  Frenchmen  of  letters  were  unable  to  under- 
stand his  work  filled  him  with  foreboding;  but  the 
appreciation  of  English  and  German  and  Russian 
connoisseurs  soon  atoned  for  the  absurd  slight.  His 
"Balzac"  is  an  impressionist  work  and  not  a  mere  re- 


RODIN  327 

production  of  reality  and  I  am  sure  it  will  yet  be  re- 
garded as  one  of  his  finest  pieces  of  portraiture. 

The  last  time  I  saw  Rodin  was  two  or  three  win- 
ters ago  on  the  Riviera:  he  had  aged  greatly;  he 
found  it  difficult  to  remember  even  friends  and  al- 
most impossible  to  think  of  future  plans.  The 
sturdy  workman's  body  seemed  likely  to  outlive  the 
soul. 

As  an  artist  Rodin's  place  is  secure:  he  is  unques- 
tionably the  greatest  of  the  long  line  of  notable 
French  sculptors :  indeed  I  am  inclined  to  believe 
that  he  will  stand  with  Donatello,  Michelangelo  and 
Phidias  among  the  greatest  of  all  time.  And  I  am 
glad  to  believe  that  he  knew  this.  I  went  with  him 
some  years  ago  to  the  British  Museum.  Though  he 
had  often  talked  of  the  splendid  Assyrian  lions,  he 
went  by  preference  to  the  works  of  the  primitive 
artists  of  all  countries,  even  to  the  wooden  idols  of 
the  South-sea  savages :  here  and  there  he  picked  one 
out  for  special  praise:  no  excellence  could  escape 
him:  again  and  again  he  would  shake  his  head  and 
mutter  tin  chef-d' ceiivre — a  masterpiece.  But  be- 
fore leaving  he  led  the  way  to  the  so-called  Elgin 
marbles,  to  the  figures  stolen  from  the  Parthenon. 
Never  shall  I  forget  the  emotion  they  called  forth 
in  him:  with  reverent  fingers  he  touched  the  marble 
limbs;  "every  part,  sheer  perfection"  he  said  again 
and  again  with  trembling  voice;  "no  one  has  ever 
equalled  them,  no  one." 


328      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

"Not  Michelangelo,  nor  you?"  I  asked. 

"No,  no,"  he  replied;  adding  quickly,  "our  work 
is  different.  .  .  .  One  must  just  be  content  with 
having  done  the  best  in  one." 

Rodin  may  indeed  be  content:  for  more  than  once 
he  has  experienced  the  truth  of  Burns's  couplet: 

Who  does  the  utmost  that  he  can 
Will  whiles  dae  mair. 


ANATOLE    FRANCE 

BY  universal  consent  Anatole  France  is  the  fore- 
most man  of  letters  In  France  today,  the 
wisest  and  most  articulate,  if  not  the  strongest  or 
noblest  of  living  Frenchmen. 

Before  I  try  to  give  a  personal  impression  of  him 
let  us  look  at  him  for  a  moment  as  he  appears  to 
the  casual  acquaintance  in  the  mirror  of  his  writings. 

As  every  one  knows,  his  real  name  is  Thibaut,  he 
is  the  son  of  a  Paris  bookseller,  and  has  led  the 
most  uneventful  of  lives.  He  had  an  excellent 
classical  education,  took  to  reading  as  a  child,  and 
was  a  writer  before  he  was  out  of  his  teens.  Al- 
most at  once  he  showed  himself  master  of  a  style 
as  simple  and  supple  as  Congreve's,  but  even  more 
cunningly  cadenced,  and  set  off  with  flashes  of  ironic 
insight  which  delight  the  intellect.  He  has  written 
a  score  of  so-called  novels  in  which  the  story  Is  usu- 
ally shght,  and  the  characters,  with  one  exception, 
are  mere  lay-figures — marionettes  or  abstractions. 
Yet  all  these  books  are  interesting  for  the  sake  of 
the  hero  and  of  his  reflections  on  life — the  thoughts 
and  feelings  of  a  tolerant,  cynical,  unworldly  wise 
observer  filled  to  the  lips  with  the  milk  of  human 

329 


330      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

kindness.  The  hero  is  always  the  same  character: 
Sylvestre  Bonnard  is  blood  brother  to  M.  Bergeret, 
and  Doctor  Trublet  only  differs  from  them  in  name, 
and  these  are  all  studies  for  the  famous  Maitre 
Jerome  Coignard,  who  is  at  once  scholar,  priest, 
epicurean  philosopher,  and  scoundrel.  He  drinks 
and  cheats,  plays  pandar  and  libertine,  borrows 
wine  from  an  inn  and  runs  off  with  his  employer's 
diamonds,  and  yet  when  blessed  with  the  curious 
learning,  the  philosophic  thought,  the  tolerance  and 
humor  of  dear  M.  Bonnard,  he  becomes  the  most 
lovable  of  scapegraces,  and  the  finest  portrait  ex- 
tant of  Anatole  France  himself.  We  enjoy  his 
company  almost  as  much  as  we  should  enjoy  Ham- 
let speaking  in  person.  The  lessons  France  teaches 
are  those  Renan  taught,  and  Montaigne:  he  is  as 
typical  a  Frenchman  as  Odysseus  was  a  typical 
Greek — a  convinced  sceptic,  disbelieving  in  any  so- 
lution of  life's  mystery,  and  boldly  preaching  epi- 
curean enjoyment  of  all  life's  pleasures,  whether  of 
sense,  or  soul,  of  taste  or  intellect,  with  widest  tol- 
erance of  others'  faults  and  follies,  crimes  and  mad- 
nesses. All  readers  have  come  to  love  the  Abbe 
Coignard  as  among  the  most  notable  and  most  lov- 
able creations  in  all  French  literary  art:  the  one  or- 
ganic figure  given  to  literature  since  the  Bazarof  of 
Turgenief.  A  comparison  between  the  Abbe 
Coignard  and  Hamlet  would  teach  us  a  great  deal 
about  the  differences  between  the  French  and  the 


ANATOLE  FRANCE  331 

English  genius,  and  would  at  the  same  time  show 
how  widely  the  French  Revolution  with  its  realistic 
striving  separates  the  modern  world  from  the  ro- 
mantic past. 

Now  let  us  see  how  M.  France  in  real  life  com- 
pares with  his  own  most  famous  portrait. 

Not  a  notable  appearance,  a  man  of  sixty  or  sixty- 
five,  silver-grey  hair  bristling  up  like  a  brush  over 
his  forehead,  grey  moustache  and  imperial.  At  first 
sight  he  looks  like  Napoleon  the  Third;  his  face  an 
even  longer  oval;  his  eyes,  the  color  of  coffee 
beans,  have  heavy  gummy  bags  under  them;  the 
flesh  of  cheeks  and  neck  is  discolored  and  sags  a 
little — the  stigmata  of  sense  indulgence.  Nearer 
seen  the  eyes  are  vivid,  bright;  no  trace  of  exhaus- 
tion; eyes  like  his  mind,  eager  and  quick,  perhaps 
even  too  quick;  their  vitaHty  bearing  witness  to  a 
certain  moderation  in  his  pursuit  of  pleasure. 

A  man  of  five  feet  seven  or  eight  when  standing 
upright,  now  bowed  habitually,  chin  on  chest,  neck 
bent  forward;  carelessly  dressed,  brown  camel-hair 
pajamas,  silk-faced  over  a  white  knitted  vest  with 
black  border;  feet  thrust  in  morocco  slippers, 
whitish  woollen  socks — no  affectation,  no  showing 
off,  nothing  but  a  desire  of  comfort. 

He  meets  one  with  cordial  courtesy,  unaffected 
kindliness,  one  might  call  it.  He  was  written  to,  but 
didn't  answer.  We  called  on  him  about  ten  o'clock 
one  morning.     He  was  not  at  home,  had  gone  out 


332       CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

before  nine,  according  to  the  pleasant  manservant. 
My  friend  told  me  that  when  some  men  of  letters  a 
little  while  ago  formed  a  literary  club  and  wanted 
Anatole  France  to  be  president  they  wrote  to  him 
and  called  on  him  seven  times  before  they  found 
him.  When  at  length  they  ran  him  to  earth,  he  was 
charming  to  them,  perfect  in  courtesy,  and  as  kind 
as  possible. 

"He  simply  cannot  be  bothered  to  answer  letters 
or  to  make  appointments;  you  must  take  him  as 
he  is." 

My  experience  confirmed  this  statement  in  detail. 
We  were  shown  into  a  double  dining-room,  or 
rather  into  a  continuation  of  the  dining-room; 
primitive  paintings  on  the  walls,  drawings  of  Corot, 
a  woman's  head  in  sanguin  by  Vanloo,  and  about 
the  room  old  hahiits  of  Henry  II.  The  window 
looked  out  on  an  oblong  patch  of  greenery  smaller 
than  the  room,  ivy  masking  high  walls  at  the  back. 

The  master  came  in  and  drew  us  across  the  pas- 
sage to  his  sitting-room — a  middle-class  double  sit- 
ting-room with  a  seventeenth-century  plan  of  Paris 
as  a  decoration  for  the  whole  ceiling.  He  asked  us 
to  forgive  him  for  presenting  us  to  a  musician  who 
happened  to  be  with  him.  Two  busts,  one  in  marble 
and  one  in  plaster,  side  by  side  on  the  chimney- 
piece  caught  my  eye. 

"Rousseau,  is  it  not?"  I  asked. 

"Rousseau,"  he  replied,  "the  plaster  is  a  cast  of 


ANATOLE  FRANCE  333 

the  one  in  the  Louvre,  very  good:  the  other  in  Car- 
rara marble,  author  unknown,  is  interesting  to  me 
because  of  its  similarity  and  its  differences." 

"I'm  glad  you  like  Primitives,"  I  said  at  hazard. 
He  caught  me  up  quickly. 

"I  detest  them  now.  I  used  to  like  them,  but 
now  they  weary  me,  mean  little  to  me." 

"But  they  suit  the  old  oak  furniture  of  Henry 
II  that  I  saw  in  your  dining-room." 

"I  hate  that,  too,"  he  cried.  "I  made  every  mis- 
take a  man  could  make ;  I  loved  old  oak,  old  furni- 
ture, bought  quantities  of  it,  too  big  for  my  rooms, 
suitable  only  to  a  castle  or  great  hall;  at  length 
stifled  with  it  I  got  rid  of  it  all,  threw  it  all  out.  I 
have  passed  through  all  the  fads  in  furniture  and 
pictures  and  books." 

"Outlived  your  Corot  drawings?"  I  asked. 

"Sucked  theni  dry,"  he  parried,  smiling. 

It  was  the  morning  after  Carpentier's  victory 
over  Wells  in  the  prize-ring,  and  I  couldn't  help  ask- 
ing the  master  what  he  thought  of  the  way  athletics 
are  being  taken  up  in  France. 

"Carpentier  gives  our  youth  self-esteem,"  he  said, 
"his  victory  atones  in  some  sort  for  Alsace-Lor- 
raine"— he  smiled  with  a  pitying  shrug. 

"I  always  thought  the  next  generation,  the  gen- 
eration that  didn't  know  '70  would  show  a  new 
spirit,"  I  said. 

"It  was  to  be  foreseen,"  he  agreed,  "Bismarck 


334      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

felt  it.  The  old  French  conquering  temper  was  sure 
to  assert  itself  in  time,"  and  then  the  interest  of  the 
moment  ran  away  with  him,  the  proposal  of  the 
Ministry  and  President  that  men  should  serve  three 
years  in  the  French  army  instead  of  two  excited  his 
indignation,  and  he  fell  tooth  and  nail  on  the  po- 
litical leaders  of  the  moment.  No  Englishman 
would  have  dreamed  of  talking  of  his  chief  poli- 
ticians, the  Asquiths  and  Balfours,  Greys  and 
Georges  with  the  same  contempt  and  disgust. 

"Perfectly  stupid,  these  politicians,"  he  exclaimed, 
"incredibly  stupid;  no  good  even  at  their  own  game. 
They  pretend  to  trim  their  sail  to  every  breath  of 
popular  feeling  and  they  can't  even  tell  how  the 
wind  blows.  They  do  not  see  that  France  will  not 
have  the  service  of  three  years. ^  We  all  know  it 
only  takes  a  year  to  make  a  soldier;  they  keep  them 
for  two  years  as  it  is,  and  now  they  want  to  increase 
the  two  to  three.     France  won't  have  it,  it's  absurd. 

"If  they  declared  openly  that  they  were  going  to 
shake  off  the  German  menace  once  for  all  and  re- 
gain Alsace-Lorraine,  France  would  march  like  one 
man,  but  this  absurd  and  meaningless  extension  of 
service  is  merely  showing  off,  and  we  won't  have  it." 

A  moment  later  he  began  to  give  instances  of  the 
crass  stupidity  of  French  politicians,  and  notably  of 
F 

"F is  one  of  the  best:  yet  he  is  stupid  to 

*  This  was  written  in  the  Summer  of  1913. 


ANATOLE  FRANCE  335 

a  degree;  his  blunders  are  legendary:  his  dense- 
ness  proverbial.  An  example:  he  had  to  go  once 
to  visit  Rodin:  I  forget  the  occasion.  Rodin,  he 
was  told  by  his  official  prompter,  is  a  great  sculptor, 
the  greatest  since  Angelo,  a  master  craftsman:  he 
was  advised — 'it  would  be  nice  of  you  to  say  a  com- 
plimentary word  to  him.' 

''At  his  wit's  end  the  Minister  looked  round  the 
studio;  on  every  hand  statues,  as  he  thought,  de- 
faced and  broken,  torsos  of  women,  vase-like  with- 
out limbs,  here  a  head  and  there  a  plaster  outhne  of 
hips  or  breast. 

"Wishing  to  be  sympathetic,  the  President  at 
length  found  the  kindly  phrase : 

"  'One  sees  that  you,  too,  have  suffered  in  your 
removals,  M.  Rodin.' 

"It  is  perhaps  too  eminently  stupid  to  be  true,  but 
the  stupidity  is  characteristic  of  them  all.  .  .   . 

"Another  time  a  Minister  of  Public  Instruction 
had  to  make  a  speech  about  the  Ecole  de  Medicine. 
Some  doctor  had  written  it  for  him,  and  in  order  to 
vary  the  phrase  had  spoken  also  of  the  Faculte  de 
Medicine.  The  good  bourgeois  Minister,  loving 
sounding  phrases,  talked  of  the  Ecole  de  la  Faculte 
de  Medicine.  Next  day  the  papers  made  fun  of 
him,  and  an  editor  came  to  correct  the  mistake  in  the 
Journal  Officiel. 

"  'They  made  fun  enough  of  me,'  said  the  Min- 
ister, 'leave  it  alone — don't  rub  it  in.' 


336      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

"A  certain  common  sense  in  the  man  chastening 
ignorance." 

Fearing  lest  I  should  feel  no  Interest  In  these 
French  household  affairs,  so  to  speak,  Anatole 
France  tried  courteously  to  draw  me  Into  the  con- 
versation. 

"But  youVe  politicians  In  England,"  he  remarked, 
"and  must  know  what  they're  like." 

"Unfortunately  Englishmen,"  I  replied,  "still  re- 
gard their  politicians  as  great  men  and  Important." 

"Your  conditions  are  different,"  he  rejoined  po- 
litely, "politics  are  not  matters  of  life  and  death  to 
you,  but  here  in  France  the  politicians  have  our 
lives  In  their  hands.  They  should  know  their  metier 
at  least,  but  they  don't.  It  isn't  much  to  ask  a  man 
that  he  should  know  his  trade,  but  they  haven't  even 
reached  that  level;  they're  inferior,  I  Imagine,  even 
to  yours  In  England." 

"They  may  be  a  little,"  I  replied  dubiously, 
"more  especially  In  foreign  politics.  The  aristo- 
cratic tradition  In  England  gives  the  politician  an 
inkling  of  his  business.  Sir  Edward  Grey  is  a  poli- 
tician who  knows  his  metier  by  instinct,  so  to  speak, 
the  instinct  of  a  governing  class.  It  Isn't  much,  that 
Instinct,  but  he  has  it,  and  its  effect  Is  sometimes,  as 
In  this  Balkan  business,  extraordinary." 

"Our  politicians  haven't  got  It,"  replied  France, 
"and  don't  seem  able  to  get  It.  They're  not  capable 
and  never  will  be ;  they're  not  even  honest.   I  remem- 


ANATOLE  FRANCE  337 

ber  Panama,  you  see:  they  were  all  in  it,  of  course: 
if  they  hadn't  touched  (and  he  made  the  significant 
gesture  with  finger  and  thumb)  c'etait  tout  comme: 
they  had  allowed  others  to  steal.  A  word  of  one 
of  them  occurs  to  me.  Speaking  of  a  rival,  he  said, 
'Poor  fellow,  he  is  so  naive,  though  he  has  had  three 
Ministerial  posts,  he's  still  poor — stupid  of  him.' 

"Your  politicians  are  honest,  at  least:  are  they 
not?" 

"Indifferent  honest,"  I  replied,  "though  this  Mar- 
coni scandal  shows  that  they  find  it  increasingly  dif- 
ficult to  keep  their  hands  clean.  As  democracy  ad- 
vances. Ministers  diminish  in  ability,  and  even  more 
markedly  in  honesty,  I  imagine ;  but  with  us  the  pro- 
fessors are  even  a  worse  plague  than  the  poli- 
ticians." 

"In  France  they're  much  better,"  cried  France, 
"they  know  their  business  such  as  it  is,  and  they're 
harmless,  they've  no  power,  whereas  the  politicians 
have  power,  even  now  they're  leading  France  to  a 
disaster.     We  can't  rival  Germany  in  numbers!" 

Suddenly  a  new  thought  suggested  itself  and  he 
was  off  on  the  fresh  trail  headlong. 

"Numbers  don't  win  battles :  victory  depends  on 
the  spirit  of  the  troops,  and  to  tell  the  truth  a  good 
deal  on  chance.  You  have  a  conquering  army  to- 
day, today  week  it'll  be  beaten.  The  more  one 
studies  the  early  victories  of  Napoleon,  the  more 
one  sees  that  time  and  again  his  army  was  about  to 


338      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

run  away  when  the  Austrians  turned  tail  first,  ils 
foutaient  le  camp  plus  tot  et  tout  etait  dit.  .  .  . 
(Another  quick  transition.) 

"At  this  moment  the  spirit  of  France  Is  excellent, 
couldn't  be  better  Indeed;  but  our  politicians  are 
dreadful  .  .  .  the  Church  In  France  Is  another 
bad  Influence,  a  reactionary  Influence  and  irra- 
tional.  .  .  ." 

Determined  to  bring  him  back  to  literature  and 
enduring  things  I  ventured  to  interrupt: 

"Yet  Renan  always  had  an  affection  for  it,"  I  re- 
marked, "and  I  always  think  of  Renan  and  you  as 
connected  In  some  way,  probably  by  the  magic  of 
an  exquisite  rhythmic  prose." 

Lightning-quick  he  flashed  into  the  new  field. 

"And  in  a  certain  Ironic  acceptance  of  the  facts 
and  chances  of  life,"  he  cried.  "Renan  was  always 
a  liberating  influence;  but  I  don't  care  for  his 
dramas,"  and  the  eyebrows  went  up  expressively. 

"That's  where  one  sees  his  kinship  to  Gounod,"  I 
added,  "a  sort  of  sister-soul  in  frank  sensuality." 

The  young  musician  took  this  up  eagerly: 

"True  indeed,"  he  broke  in,  "and  Gounod,  too, 
was  Interesting.  I  was  an  organist  at  St.  Cloud. 
Gounod  used  to  come  to  the  church  often,  he  must 
have  been  seventy-five  years  of  age  then :  yet  il  ser- 
vait  la  7nesse,  and  did  it  with  rare  unction  and  dig- 
nity." 


ANATOLE  FRANCE  339 

"Really,"  exclaimed  France,  hugely  Interested. 
"I  thought  he  didn't  believe  in  Christianity." 

"He  didn't,"  replied  the  musician,  "but  he  loved 
to  officiate  at  Mass;  he  was  an  actor  born,  and  he 
acted  that  part  with  majesty." 

"All  artists  are  naturally  actors,"  commented 
France;  "but  did  old  Gounod  really  take  Com- 
munion?" 

"No,  no,"  replied  the  musician,  "religion  to 
Gounod  was  merely  a  subject  of  his  art,  as  he 
shows  in  Faust,  for  example.  But  he  used  to  love 
to  serve  the  Mass  surrounded  by  pretty  women." 

"I  can  see  him  at  it,"  cried  France,  smihng;  "le 
beau  sexe  always  his  weakness,  wasn't  it?" 

"Surely,"  said  the  musician,  "he  was  a  lover  even 
with  one  foot  in  the  grave." 

"Old  men  have  a  certain  attraction  for  some 
women,"  France  remarked,  with  a  smile  of  ineffable 
complacent  satisfaction. 

"MaUre,"  I  broke  in,  again  to  bring  the  talk  back 
to  literature,  "please  tell  me  about  your  writing; 
Renan  used  to  declare  that  his  prose  came  to  him 
easily,  flowed  from  him,  so  to  speak.  Is  that  true  of 
you?  Or  do  you  agree  with  Tolstoy  that  even  sim- 
ple prose  is  a  matter  of  labor  and  pains?" 

"To  me  writing's  horribly  difficult,"  replied 
France  frankly,  "horribly." 

And  then  the  qualification : 

"But  let's  distinguish :      Ulle  des  Pingouins  cost 


340      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

me  Infinite  labor  because  I  wanted  to  make  each 
small  side  issue  as  important  as  the  main  theme:  it 
was  chiefly  embroidery,  so  to  speak,  and  embroid- 
ery takes  time  and  thought. 

"Les  Dieus  ont  Soif  was  comparatively  easy  be- 
cause the  main  theme  which  I  had  in  my  head  at  the 
beginning  was  enough  to  fill  the  book.  This  was  the 
theme;  that  ordinary  men  in  extraordinary  circum- 
stances themselves  become  extraordinary.  Gamelin 
was  nothing  much,  an  ordinary  man,  but  in  the  great 
Revolution  he  became  great,  because  the  current 
about  him  was  irresistible  and  gave  him  enormous 
force.  One  other  idea :  the  political  fanatic  is  very 
like  the  religious  fanatic.  Gamelin  was  by  nature 
a  Dominic  as  Dominic  might  have  been  a  Gamelin. 
The  two  themes  were  really  one  and  the  same,  and 
I  therefore  found  it  easy  to  write  the  book." 

"And  the  new  book  Les  Anges?"  I  asked. 

"Oh,  harder  than  ever,"  he  cried,  mimicking  dis- 
tress, "it's  full  of  new  ideas,  and  new  ideas  are  ex- 
traordinarily difficult  to  express.  My  new  book  is 
about  the  revolt  of  the  angels,  and  it  is  giving  me  in- 
finite pains.  I  want  to  put  into  it  more  ideas  than 
Dante  or  Milton  ever  had.  That  may  sound  con- 
ceited, but  not  when  one's  talking  to  intelligent  peo- 
ple. One  can  then  talk  freely,  sincerely.  Neither 
Milton  nor  Dante  had  many  new  ideas  on  any  sub- 
ject, and  I  want  to  stuff  this  book  full  of  new  ideas, 
and  that  makes  it  hard,  hard,  every  page  an  effort. 


ANATOLE  FRANCE  341; 

The  better  work  one  wishes  to  do,"  he  added,  "thf 
harder  it  is." 

"But  doesn't  the  mere  power  of  expression  grow 
with  use  and  become  easier?" 

"Not  to  me,"  he  replied,  "it  all  depends  on  the 
ideas.  You  can  make  your  art  as  hard  as  you  like, 
even  in  old  age,  especially  in  old  age,"  he  went  on, 
"when  you  want  to  do  your  uttermost  and  the  time 
is  growing  short." 

There  was  a  pathetic  dignity,  I  thought,  in  the 
unconscious  acceptance  of  the  high  task. 

"Yet  you  found  time  to  preside  the  other  night 
at  the  Zola  dinner,"  I  remarked,  "though  one  would 
have  thought  that  you  and  Zola  were  poles  apart." 

"Quite  true,"  he  agreed,  "I  don't  care  much  for 
his  books  except  L'Assommoir.  There  are  not 
enough  ideas  in  them  to  interest  me,  and  the  qual- 
ity of  thought  all  through  his  work  seems  to  me 
rather  poor,  but  still  he  was  always  a  Liberal,  a 
Dreyfusard,  too,  never  reactionary,  and  so  when 
they  came  and  asked  me  to  preside  at  his  dinner 
I  could  not  refuse,  though  he  always  seemed  to  me 
a  great  mason  rather  than  a  great  architect  or 
artist.  He  took  small  interest  in  things  of  the  spirit. 
A  crowd  was  more  to  him  than  a  thought." 

"You  once  said,  cher  maitre,  that  religion  no  lon- 
ger existed  in  France:  did  you  mean  that  literally?" 

"Religion  is  dead  in  France,"  he  repeated;  "it 
can  never  be  revived,  nobody  cares  for  it  or  pays 


342      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

any  attention  to  It;  we  have  done  for  ever  with 
monks  and  monkery.  Even  the  Church  Is  only  a 
means  of  political  action,  or  rather  of  reaction,"  he 
laughed,  "but  in  England  religion  Is  still  alive:  is 
it  not?" 

"In  England  one  can  still  find  the  corpse  by  one's 
nose,"  I  remarked. 

France  laughed.  "That's  the  very  word:  here 
the  carcass  Is  desseche:  but  in  England  still  malo- 
dorous; we're  a  hundred  years  then  ahead  of  you." 

The  assumption  seemed  to  me  daring. 

"But  is  religion  done  with  altogether,  in  your 
opinion?"  I  asked  In  some  wonder. 

"Certainly,"  he  replied,  apparently  surprised  even 
by  the  question,  "the  whole  paraphernalia  of  mira- 
cles and  belief  in  a  life  after  death  and  an  anthro- 
pomorphic God — all  gone  for  ever,  swept  clean 
away — and  a  good  thing  too." 

"Religion,  then,  is  rather  like  measles,  a  childish 
complaint?"  I  probed. 

"That's  it,  just  that,"  he  continued;  "and  we've 
got  rid  not  only  of  the  Christian  religion,  but  also 
of  the  morality  as  well.  Of  course.  Christian  moral- 
ity was  absolutely  childish  and  contradictory:  we 
had  to  get  quit  of  it  all." 

"But  surely,"  I  insisted,  "one  of  these  days  we 
shall  have  a  scientific  morality.  The  laws  of  health 
both  of  body  and  spirit  will  be  ascertained  and 
taught.     And  when  once  the  canon  is  accepted  and 


ANATOLE  FRANCE  343 

established,  it  will  excite  emotion  and  gradually  be- 
come sacred,  and  so  religion  will  again  be  brought 
back  into  life." 

"I  see  no  need  of  it,"  he  retorted.  "0«  est  sage 
en  France,"  he  went  on  earnestly:  "we  have  the  race 
morality  of  moderation  in  our  bones:  it's  rather 
an  EEsthetical  than  an  ethical  ideal,  if  you  will;  but 
we  are  moderate  and  prudent  by  nature  in  every- 
thing, and  that's  all  one  wants  in  life." 

"Men  always  need  guidance,"  I  replied  tenta- 
tively, "the  example  of  the  nobler  spirits  as  to  how 
far  individual  selfishness  should  go,  and  how  the 
need  of  self-sacrifice  and  devotion  should  be  ful- 
filled. In  these  matters  the  man  of  genius  will  al- 
ways come  to  be  regarded  as  sacred,  if  not  divine. 
Humanity  will  always  need  teachers." 

"I  don't  agree  with  you,"  he  retorted,  smiling, 
"we'll  learn  to  walk  by  frequent  fallings.  We 
French  have  an  ideal  of  wise  and  moderate  living  in 
us;  we  have  already  the  best  ordered  house  in 
Europe:  haven't  we?" 

"Certainly,"  I  replied,  "by  far  the  healthiest  and 
happiest  of  modern  states." 

"That's  what  exasperates  us,"  he  went  on,  "about 
this  German  menace.  We  want  to  put  our  house 
in  order,  to  attend  to  this  weakness,  bring  about  that 
reform  and  realize  our  high  ideal  of  social  justice; 
but  we  are  perpetually  hindered  by  that  barbarous 
menace  on  our  frontier." 


344      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

The  political  situation  again  absorbed  his  interest, 
and  the  talk  only  flitted  from  it  occasionally  to  other 
subjects.  I  can  only  recall  one  literary  judgment 
which  perhaps  deserves  to  be  recorded. 

"Rene  de  Gourmont,"  he  said,  "is  one  of  the  men 
I  admire  most  in  contemporary  French  literature: 
he  always  interests  me." 

Then  we  talked  of  a  bust  of  the  master  himself 
that  was  just  completed  and  a  drawing  from  the 
bust,  and  he  discussed  the  differences  between  these 
allied  creations  with  acute  understanding  and  as  dis- 
passionately as  if  he  himself  were  not  in  any  way 
concerned. 

Words  can  hardly  render  the  ingenuous  simplic- 
ity, the  transparent  sincerity  of  the  man:  no  slight- 
est trace  in  him  of  affectation  or  pomposity:  no 
pose  of  any  sort.  As  far  as  manners  go,  Anatole 
France  almost  reaches  perfection.  His  simple  atti- 
tude towards  his  own  work  and  towards  friends  and 
foreigners  alike  filled  me  with  admiration.  I  had 
never  met  anything  like  it  among  men  of  my  own 
race  save  in  two  famous  instances:  Thomas  Bayard, 
the  American  Ambassador  in  London,  was  one;  and 
Thomas  Ellis,  the  Chief  Whip  at  one  time  of  the 
Welsh  Liberal  Party,  was  the  other;  both  these  men 
had  the  genius  of  perfect  manners.  Probably  be- 
cause of  his  astounding  intellectual  curiosity,  Ana- 
tole France  is  engrossed  by  all  the  barren  journalistic 
controversies   of  the   time,    though  at  heart  more 


ANATOLE  FRANCE  345 

deeply  interested  still  in  ideas  for  their  own  sake,  and 
chiefly  in  those  aperciis  which  throw  light  on  man 
and  man's  relation  to  the  universe.  Like  Meredith, 
he  loves  to  flit  about  from  thought  to  thought;  but 
Meredith  seemed  to  me  mired  in  a  convention  of 
conduct,  while  France  was  bird  free  of  all  conven- 
tion and  contemptuous  of  mere  sexual  morality. 

"Surely  in  England,"  he  said,  "that  dreary  Puri- 
tanism is  merely  hypocritical?  You  cannot  for  ever 
go  on  ignoring  differences  of  sex." 

"I  believe  with  Voltaire,"  I  replied,  "that  prud- 
ery of  speech  is  always  a  sign  of  loose  morals;  when 
'purity  goes  out  of  the  manners,  it  takes  refuge  in 
the  language.'  " 

"A  fine  piece  of  insight,"  he  exclaimed;  "but  your 
detachment  surprises  me;  I  thought  all  Englishmen 
loved  even  the  faults  of  their  countrymen?" 

"Nearly  every  man  has  a  certain  partiality  for  his 
own  country  and  his  own  people,"  I  replied,  "but  I 
am  an  American  and  feel  that  it  is  difficult  for  a 
writer  or  artist  in  England  today  to  be  patriotic. 
Englishmen  as  a  rule  despise  both  letters  and  art. 
In  France  you  are  free;  men  of  letters  are  organ- 
ized and  respected;  in  England  they  are  unorganized 
and  disdained,  and  if  any  of  them  are  honored  it 
is  sure  to  be  some  mediocrity  who  beats  the  pa- 
triotic drum,  or  wins  popularity  with  sickly  senti- 
ment." 

"You  are  much  worse  off,  then,  than  we  are,"  he 


346      CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

decided,  "I  have  always  understood  that  English- 
ment  don't  care  much  for  the  things  of  the  spirit." 

"An  artist  In  England,"  I  replied,  "Is  regarded 
as  if  he  were  an  acrobat,  and  a  great  writer  and 
great  man  like  Meredith  Is  not  so  highly  appreci- 
ated as  a  tenth-rate  general  or  politician  or  ex- 
plorer; Indeed,  he  Is  on  much  the  same  level  as  a 
trick-b  I  cyclist,  or  actor  or  dancer.  Shakespeare  was 
treated  like  a  menial:  Blake  died  In  want  of  neces- 
saries: and  in  our  own  day  poets  of  the  first  rank 
have  committed  suicide  out  of  sheer  poverty.  Lit- 
erature and  Art  are  less  esteemed  In  London  than 
in  any  other  civilized  capital  except  New  York." 

"Yet  we  have  an  Idea,"  he  objected,  "that  an 
aristocratic  society  Is  always  more  favorable  to  the 
artist  or  man  of  letters  than  a  democracy;  England, 
then,  forms  an  exception  to  the  rule?" 

"No,  no,"  I  replied,  "little  as  her  barbarian 
aristocracy  cares  for  art  or  letters,  it  still  cares  more 
than  the  middle  class  or  the  democracy.  You  have 
no  Idea  how  low  the  Anglo-Saxon  standard  of  taste 
and  knowledge  Is :  George  Ohnet  In  England  would 
be  more  highly  esteemed  than  a  Flaubert  or  a  Bal- 
zac; because  he  would  have  more  readers  and  make 
more  money." 

"It  Is  still,  then,  an  advantage  to  be  born  a 
Frenchman,"  said  Anatole  France,  and  I  could  do 
nothing  but  admit  that  for  the  artist  and  writer,  as 
for  the  majority  of  men,  it  certainly  Is  an  advantage. 


r/\)  y^f 


L 


DATE  DUE 

APP2. 

1  IQQQ 

1 

CAYLORO 

PRINTED  IN  USA. 

\\ 


